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MODERN  ELOQUENCE 

LIBRARY  OF^ 
AFTER-DINNER  SPEECHES,  LECTURES 
OCCASIONAL  ADDRESSES 


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THOMAS  BR4CKETT  REED 
Photogravure  after  a  photograph  from  life 


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V.  / 


Copyright,  igoo 

By 

THE    UNIVERSITY    SOCIETY 


COMMITTEE   OF  SELECTION 

Edward  Everett  Hale,  Author  of  "  The  Man  Without  a 
Country." 

John  B.  Gordon,  Former  United  States  Senator. 

Nathan  Haskell  Dole,  Associate  Editor  "  International 
Library  of  Famous  Literature." 

James  B.  Pond,  Manager  Lecture  Bureau ;  Author  of  "  Eccen- 
tricities of  Genius.' 

George  McLean  Harper,  Professor  of  EngHsh  Literature, 
Princeton  LTniversity. 

Lorenzo  Sears,  Professor  of  Enghsh  Literature,  Brown  Uni- 
versity. 

Edwin  M.  Bacon,  Former  Editor  "  Boston  Advertiser  "  and 
"  Boston  Post." 

J.  Walker  McSpadden,  Managing  Editor  "  Edition  Royale  " 
of  Balzac's  Works. 

F.  CuNLiFFE  Owen,  Member  Editorial  Staff  "  New  York- 
Tribune." 

Truman  A.  DeWeese,  Member  Editorial  Staff  "  Chicago 
Times-Herald." 

Champ  Clark,  Member  of  Congress  from  Missouri. 

Marcus  Benjamin,  Editor,  National  Museum,  Washington, 
D.  C. 

Clark  Howell,  Editor  "  Atlanta  Constitution." 

INTRODUCTIONS    AND    SPECIAL   ARTICLES    BY 

Thomas  B.  Reed,  Hamilton  Wright  Mabie, 

Lorenzo  Sears,  Jonathan  P.  Dolliver, 

Champ  Clark,  Edward  Everett  Hale, 

Albert  Ellery  Bergh. 

Note. — A  large  number  of  tlie  most  distinguished  speakers  of  this 
country  and  Great  Britain  have  selected  their  own  best  speeches  for 
this  Library.  These  speakers  include  Whitelaw  Reid,  William  Jennings 
Bryan,  Henry  van  Dyke,  Henry  M.  Stanley,  Newell  Dwight  Hillis, 
Joseph  Jefferson,  Sir  Henry  Irving,  Arthur  T.  Hadley,  John  D.  Long, 
David  Starr  Jordan,  and  many  others  of  equal  note. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  present  work,  as  its  title  implies,  is  devoted  exclu- 
sively to  Modern  Eloqnence.  Its  publishers  have 
aimed  to  supply  the  reading  public  with  the  best  After-Din- 
ner  Speeches,  Lectures,  and  Occasional  Addresses  delivered 
in  this  country,  or  abroad,  during  the  past  century.  In  this 
respect  the  Library  of  Modern  Eloquence  may  be  said  to 
cover  a  field  peculiarly  its  own.  The  orations  of  Demos- 
thenes, Cicero,  Burke,  Webster  and  other  noted  orators  may 
be  found  in  every  well-equipped  public  library,  and  there 
have  been  published,  from  time  to  time,  oratorical  antholo- 
gies containing  gems  of  eloquence  culled  from  the  speeches 
of  standard  orators  of  all  countries  and  of  all  ages;  but  this 
is  the  first  attempt  to  preserve  unabridged  and  in  lasting 
form  the  best  occasional  oratory  of  recent  times. 

"  Modern  Eloquence  "  is  in  fact  a  cyclopaedia  of  the 
choicest  wit  and  wisdom  embodied  in  the  best  speeches  of 
the  century.  Speeches  are  given  complete,  and  there  is 
no  collection  of  later  oratory  that  surpasses  this  work  either 
in  scope  or  scholarship.  Indeed,  there  is  no  other  collec- 
tion devoted  exclusively  to  occasional  oratory. 

The  Editors  have  adhered  strictly  to  the  plan  of  excluding 
all  speeches  that  cannot  properly  be  classed  under  the  head 
of  oratorical  literature.  For  this  reason  they  have  discarded 
Parliamentary  speeches,  and  all  other  speeches  delivered  in 
the  heat  of  debate,  as  well  as  addresses  that  were  found  to 
be  fragmentary  or  unsatisfactory.  No  address  has  been  in- 
cluded that  bears  evidence  of  loose  construction  and  con- 
fusion of  ideas.  The  speeches  selected  possess  in  some  de- 
gree what  Carlyle  termed  "  the  white  sunlight  of  potent 
words."  They  range  from  the  humorous  after-dinner  speech 
to  the  eloquent  oration  and  classic  lecture.  In  the  list  of 
contents  will  be  found  masterpieces  in  every  department  of 
modern  eloquence — model  after-dinner  speeches,  by  such 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

noted  postprandial  orators  as  Joseph  H.  Choate,  Samuel  L. 
Clemens  (Mark  Twain),  Chauncey  M.  Depew,  Charles  Dick- 
ens, and  Horace  Porter; — model  lectures,  both  humorous 
and  profound,  by  such  celebrities  as  Matthew  Arnold,  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  Thomas  Carlyle,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson, 
William  M.  Thackeray,  and  Wendell  Phillips; — model  occa- 
sional addresses,  of  the  most  diversified  order,  by  such  emi- 
nent authors  and  orators  as  William  Ellery  Channing,  Rufus 
Choate,  George  William  Curtis,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes, ' 
Henry  van  Dyke,  Edward  Everett,  James  Russell  Lowell, 
Thomas  Henry  Huxley,  John  Ruskin,  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman,  Charles  Sumner  and  Daniel  Webster. 

The  three  general  departments  are  arranged  in  alpha- 
betical order  in  accordance  with  the  names  of  the  speakers. 
The  first  three  volumes  are  devoted  exclusively  to  after-din- 
ner speeches,  and  the  list  of  speakers  ranges  from  Charles 
Francis  Adams  to  Wu  Ting-Fang.  The  succeeding  three 
volumes  contain  classic  and  popular  lectures,  the  alphabet- 
ical list  of  lectures  ranging  from  Matthew  Arnold  to  Henry 
Watterson.  The  seventh,  eighth,  and  ninth  volumes  cover 
the  field  of  occasional  addresses.  This  department  includes 
literary,  scientific,  commencement,  and  commemorative  ad- 
dresses, in  addition  to  eulogies  and  speeches  which  come 
under  the  general  classification  of  occasional  oratory.  In 
alphabetical  sequence  the  speakers  in  this  section  range 
from  Lyman  Abbott  to  Daniel  Webster.  The  final  volume 
is  devoted  chiefly  to  stories  and  famous  passages  compiled 
from  thousands  of  after-dinner  speeches,  lectures,  and  oc- 
casional addresses  which,  owing  to  the  exigencies  of  space, 
could  not  be  given  in  the  preceding  volumes.  The  analyt- 
ical index  forms  the  latter  portion  of  the  final  volume. 

The  compilation  of  "  Modern  Eloquence  "  has  not  been 
easy  of  accomplishment.  It  has  required  extensive  research 
and  a  large  corps  of  editors  and  editorial  assistants.  Many 
of  the  addresses  included  in  this  library  have  never  before 
been  published  in  any  form  whatever,  and  are  printed  here, 
for  the  first  time,  from  the  original  manuscripts.  These 
manuscripts  have  been  secured  by  the  publishers  of  the  pres- 
ent work  by  special  arrangement  with  the  speakers  and  lect- 
urers themselves,  or  with  their  legal  representatives.  They 
are  published  exclusively  in  this  collection  and  are  fully  pro- 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

tected  under  the  provisions  of  the  International  Copyright 
Law.  In  their  efforts  to  obtain  these  addresses  the  Pub- 
Hshers  liave  spared  neither  pains  nor  expense.  The  Editors, 
assisted  l)y  the  Committee  of  Selection  and  other  represent- 
atives, have  applied  personally,  or  by  correspondence,  to 
many  prominent  speakers  for  their  best  speeches  or  lectures. 
In  cases  where  a  desirable  speech  or  lecture  was  found  to 
exist  in  copyrii^hted  form,  special  permission  has  been  ob- 
tained from  the  publisher  or  rightful  owner  to  reproduce  it 
in  the  present  work.  In  most  instances,  speeches  and  lect- 
ures of  living  orators  have  been  submitted  to  them  for 
personal  revision.  Furthermore,  the  Editors  have  inserted 
numerous  notes,  explanatory  of  allusions  which  might  not 
be  entirely  obvious  to  the  reader.  These  notes  have  been 
interpolated  between  brackets  in  the  text  itself,  or  they 
appear  as  foot-notes. 

The  after-dinner  speeches  are  kaleidoscopic  in  variety  of 
topical  eloquence.  The  majority  of  them  partake  of  some 
element  of  humor.  They  frequently  alternate  from  passages 
and  sallies  in  lighter  vein  to  passages  and  perorations  of 
inspired  eloquence.  Some  idea  of  the  variety  of  toasts, 
topics,  and  themes  to  which  noted  personages  have  re- 
sponded, may  be  obtained  by  glancing  over  the  list  of  con- 
tents. Among  the  long  list  of  after-dinner  speeches  the 
reader  will  find:  "  The  Realm  of  Literature,"  by  Matthew 
Arnold;  "  Peace  with  Honor,"  by  Lord  Beaconsfield;  "  Mer- 
chants and  Ministers,"  by  Henry  Ward  Beecher;  "  A  Birth- 
day Address,"  by  William  Cullen  Bryant;  "The  Pilgrim 
Mothers,"  by  Joseph  H.  Choate;  "  Political  Life  in  Eng- 
land," by  Lord  Randolph  Churchill;  "  Woman — God  Bless 
Her,"  and  "Unconscious  Plagiarism,"  by  Mark  Twain; 
,"  The  English-Speaking  Race,"  by  George  William  Curtis; 
'■'  Unsolved  Problems,"  by  Chauncey  M.  Depew;  "  Friends 
Across  the  Sea,"  by  Charles  Dickens;  "  The  Typical  Dutch- 
man," by  Henry  van  Dyke;  "The  Memory  of  Burns,"  by 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson;  "The  French  Alliance,"  by  Will- 
iam M.  Evarts;  "The  Race  Problem,"  by  Plenry  W. 
Grady;  "Mere  Man,"  by  Sarah  Grand;  "The  Mission  of 
Culture,"  by  Edward  Everett  Hale;  "  Our  New  Country," 
by  Murat  Ilalstead ;  "  Dorothy  Q,"  by  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes;  "  The  Music  of  Wagner,"  by  Robert  G.  Ingersoll; 


vm  INTRODUCTION 

"The  Drama,"  by  Sir  Henry  Irving;  "Literature,"  by 
James  Russell  Lowell;  "The  Poets'  Corner,"  by  John 
Lothrop  Motley;  "Woman,"  by  Horace  Porter;  "The 
Press — right  or  wrong,"  by  Whitelaw  Reid;  "The  Hol- 
lander as  an  American,"  by  Theodore  Roosevelt;  "The 
Army  and  Navy,"  by  General  William  T.  Sherman; 
"Music,"  by  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan;  "Tribute  to  Holmes," 
by  Charles  Dudley  Warner;  and  "  The  Force  of  Ideas,"  by 
Heman  Lincoln  Wayland. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  this  is  the  first  attempt  to 
compile  a  collection  of  after-dinner  speeches.  Hitherto  the 
only  available  speeches  of  this  class  were  those  that  hap- 
pened to  be  included  in  the  collected  addresses  of  noted 
orators.  Now  the  reader  may  find  diversion  or  instruction 
in  the  perusal  of  the  best  efforts  of  all  typical  post-prandial 
orators  of  recent  times.  Here  will  be  found  a  wide  range 
of  toasts  to  which  responses  have  been  made  by  some  of  the 
most  famous  personages  of  the  past  century.  The  theme  of 
their  respective  speeches  does  not  in  every  instance  conform 
altogether  to  the  toast  or  sentiment  to  w^iich  they  were  re- 
quested to  respond.  The  Editors,  accordingly,  have  pre- 
ferred to  take  the  title  from  the  theme  of  the  address 
rather  than  from  the  toast  itself,  but  the  explanatory  note 
preceding  each  speech  invariably  cites  the  actual  toast,  as 
given  by  the  toast-master  or  the  chairman  of  the  ban- 
quet. Many  of  the  brightest,  wittiest,  and  wisest  say- 
ings of  our  time  have  been  engendered  amid  the  incense 
of  fragrant  Havanas  and  the  aroma  of  cafe  noir.  There 
is  something  particularly  inspiring  in  a  group  of  men 
who  are  in  the  best  of  spirits,  owing  to  a  good  dinner 
and  genial  company,  and  who  settle  back  comfortably  in 
their  chairs  to  listen  to  some  scientific,  literary,  political,  or 
perhaps  satirical,  discourse  from  a  noted  speaker  whose 
words  may  be  flashed  around  the  world.  The  origin  and 
development  of  after-dinner  speaking  is  fully  explained  in 
the  charming  essay  on  that  subject  written  especially  for  this 
work  by  Dr.  Lorenzo  Sears,  Professor  of  American  Litera- 
ture at  Brown  University.  Dr.  Sears  is  the  author  of  a 
standard  work  entitled  "  The  Occasional  Address,"  and  is 
eminently  fitted  to  write  on  a  subject  of  this  character. 

After-dinner    speaking    commends    itself    especially    to 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

American  manners  and  institutions,  and  in  this  line  of  ora- 
tory our  country  is  unsurpassed.  The  wide  ran>;c  of  subject 
permitted  and  the  ilexibility  of  the  occasion  are  acccnuUable 
to  a  large  extent  for  its  universal  popularity.  Prospective 
speakers  for  post-prandial  occasions  will  derive  much  assist- 
ance from  a  perusal  of  the  first  three  volumes.  Although 
the  Committee  of  Selection  have  aimed  to  include  the  bright- 
est efforts  of  noted  after-dinner  speakers,  the  name  and 
reputation  of  the  speaker  have  not  been  allowed  to  rule 
exclusively.  The  question  of  prime  importance  related  to 
the  speech  itself.  More  than  one  thousand  speeches,  de- 
livered on  many  different  occasions,  were  carefully  consid- 
ered, and  the  speakers  themselves  were  consulted  whenever 
this  was  possible. 

Many  suppose  that  the  best  after-dinner  speeches  are  the 
result  of  impromptu  efforts.  This,  however,  is  rarely  the 
case.  The  great  post-prandial  orators  make  the  most  care- 
ful preparation.  They  endeavor  to  crowd  into  the  limits  of 
five  or  ten  minutes  an  eloquent  epitome  of  thought,  argu- 
ment, fact,  fancy,  and  humor.  Emerson  is  said  to  have  put 
into  an  after-dinner  speech  the  best  philosophy  of  a  long 
essay.  The  speeches  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew,  Horace  Por- 
ter, and  other  typical  after-dinner  speakers  abound  in  terse 
wit  and  sparkling  humor  that  are  not  to  be  found  in  their 
more  elaborate  addresses.  That  "  brevity  is  the  soul  of 
wit  "  is  most  apparent  in  post-prandial  eloquence. 

Poets,  artists,  philosophers,  novelists,  scientists — men 
noted  for  their  brilliant  wit,  rollicking  humor,  or  sound 
common  sense,  have  given  to  the  world  some  of  their  best 
utterances  at  society  or  public  dinners.  Explanatory  and 
editorial  comments  relative  to  the  occasion  have  been  placed 
before  each  speech.  In  many  cases  the  introductory  speech 
of  the  presiding  officer  is  given  in  full.  These  presentation 
remarks  are  the  choicest  specimens  of  introductory  elo- 
quence and  serve  to  show  how  the  best  presiding  officers 
introduce  speakers  to  audiences. 

The  Publishers  are  indebted  to  the  New  England  Societies 
of  New  York,  St.  Louis,  Pennsylvania,  Brooklyn,  and  other 
cities;  to  the  Lotos  Club,  of  New  York;  the  Sunset  Club 
and  Hamilton  Club,  of  Chicago;  the  Savage  Club,  of  Lon- 
don;   the  Harvard  Alumni  Association,  of  Boston;    the 


X  INTRODUCTION 

Chambers  of  Commerce,  of  New  York  and  other  States; 
the  New  York  State  Bar  Association;  the  Clover  Club,  of 
Philadelphia;  the  Holland  Society  of  New  York;  to  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Arts  and  the  Royal  Literary  Fund,  of 
London,  and  to  many  other  clubs  and  associations,  for  valu- 
able material  and  assistance  in  the  compilation  of  this  sec- 
tion of  the  work.  The  full  list  of  contents  of  the  first  three 
volumes  comprises  about  200  speakers  and  300  speeches. 
Many  of  the  after-dinner  speakers  are  represented  by  several 
speeches,  and  from  half  a  dozen  to  a  dozen  speeches  have 
been  selected  to  represent  those  who  have  won  especial  fame 
as  orators  at  public  banquets. 

Some  of  the  finest  achievements  in  the  literature  of  ora- 
tory must  be  credited  to  lecturers  of  this  and  other  countries 
— to  occasional  and  professional  platform  orators  who  have 
won  lasting  renown  by  reason  of  their  brilliant  intellects  and 
persuasive  eloquence.  The  lecture,  by  frequent  repetition 
and  improvement,  becomes  the  masterpiece  of  the  speaker. 
The  sifting  and  perfecting  process  results  in  a  highly  finished 
oratorical  production.  No  sermon  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
was  ever  so  full  of  intellectual  force  or  profound  human  in- 
terest as  his  best  lecture;  no  political  address  by  Wendell 
Phillips  ever  equalled,  in  point  of  interest  or  charm  of  style, 
his  delightful  lecture  on  "  The  Lost  Arts."  The  lectures 
selected  are  bright  and  modern.  They  are  not  a  series  of 
essays  reprinted  from  some  volume  of  forgotten  lore.  Most 
of  them  are  now  published  for  the  first  time.  They  have 
been  chosen  with  due  discrimination  and  with  a  view  to 
variety  of  subject  and  breadth  of  treatment.  Prominence 
has  been  given  to  lectures  which  abound  in  wit,  humor,  and 
pathos.  As  in  human  life,  the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous  are 
found  side  by  side,  and  the  source  of  laughter  is  placed  close 
by  the  fountain  of  tears.  Every  lecture  selected  presents 
the  condensed  wit  and  wisdom  of  the  speaker — a  masterpiece 
in  the  literature  of  platform  oratory. 

The  biographical  and  critical  lectures  treat  of  poets  and 
their  verses,  musicians  and  their  songs,  artists  and  their 
paintings,  generals  and  their  victories.  These  and  kindred 
topics  of  artistic  inspiration  and  human  achievement  are 
treated  by  lecturers  who  have  devoted  years  of  study  to  their 
chosen  themes.    Among  those  who  have  excelled  in  this 


INTRODUCTION  XI 

order  of  lecture  are  William  M.  Thackeray,  Thomas  Carlyle, 
John  Lord,  Ian  Maclaren,  Wendell  Phillips,  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, William  Ellery  Channing,  Marion  Crawford,  George 
William  Curtis,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Robert  G.  Ingersoll, 
Sir  Henry  Irving,  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  and  Henry 
Watterson. 

In  the  list  of  those  who  are  identified  with  moral  and 
didactic  lectures  are  Dean  Farrar,  T.  DeWitt  Talmagc,  John 
B.  Gough,  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Mary  Ashton  Livermore, 
Charles  Kingsley,  and  many  others.  History,  travel,  and 
education  have  proved  fruitful  fields  for  platform  orators, 
Henry  M.  Stanley,  John  B.  Gordon,  Theodore  Parker,  Ed- 
ward Everett,  and  a  host  of  others  have  distinguished  them- 
selves as  lecturers  on  themes  of  this  order. 

In  the  section  devoted  to  occasional  addresses  the  Com- 
mittee of  Selection  have  aimed  to  include  only  those  ad- 
dresses which  are  characterized  by  attractiveness  of  style, 
clearness  and  force  of  thought,  and  appropriateness  of  illus- 
tration. Among  the  literary  addresses  are  given  the  most 
representative  speeches  of  great  authors  and  critics.  Those 
presented  are  interpretative  and  expository,  but  never 
descend  to  the  dulness  of  dogmatism.  They  pertain  to 
some  important  phase  of  literature  or  to  some  famous 
author.  They  differ  from  the  lectures  in  having  been 
delivered  only  on  special  occasions.  Among  the  speak- 
ers represented  in  this  class  are  Andrew  Lang,  Oliver  Wen- 
dell Holmes,  John  Ruskin,  Walter  Pater,  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman,  and  scores  of  others  of  equal  note.  Of  scien- 
tific addresses  only  those  have  been  selected  which  are 
at  once  clear,  comprehensive,  and  entertaining — elements 
which  are  seldom  lacking  when  the  speaker  is  an  authority 
on  the  particular  branch  of  science  of  which  he  treats. 
Among  those  who  have  delivered  notable  scientific  ad- 
dresses, and  are  here  represented,  are  Sir  John  Lubbock, 
Thomas  Henry  Huxley,  John  Tyndall,  Charles  Robert  Dar- 
win, Lord  Kelvin,  Richard  A.  Proctor,  and  Sir  Frederick 
Herschell.  Some  of  the  most  famous  educators  and  elo- 
quent divines  have  been  identified  with  commencement 
addresses.  There  are  also  many  fine  examples  of  the  eulogy. 
George  William  Curtis,  for  instance,  discoursed  eloquently 
on  Lowell;    Edward  Everett  eulogized  Washington;   anc| 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

numerous  eloquent  eulogies  may  be  found  in  the  addresses 
of  Rufus  Choate,  William  Cullen  Bryant,  Charles  Sumner, 
Parke  Godwin,  and  their  contemporaries. 

Many  of  the  occasional  addresses  treat  of  miscellaneous 
subjects  which  will  be  found  systematically  classified  in  the 
analytical  index.  The  representative  speeches  derived  from 
French,  German,  and  Spanish  sources  were  in  most  instances 
specially  translated  for  this  work.  In  the  English  version 
great  care  has  been  exercised  in  preserving  the  thought  and 
idiomatic  flavor  of  the  original  text. 

The  capital  stories,  bright  sayings,  famous  passages,  and 
flashes  of  wit  embodied  in  the  final  volume  greatly  increase 
the  value  of  the  library  as  a  cyclopaedia  of  eloquence.  Ref- 
erence to  each  one  of  these  extracts  will  be  found  in  the 
analytical  index,  entered  under  its  proper  subject-head  or 
topical  classification.  The  work  thus  becomes  a  topical 
cyclopaedia  of  oratorical  quotations  which  will  be  found  of 
great  convenience  to  public  speakers  and  to  all  persons  called 
to  prepare  a  lecture,  respond  to  a  toast,  or  deliver  an  occa- 
sional address.  At  a  moment's  notice  one  may  turn  to  the 
brightest  anecdote  and  most  pertinent  illustration  for  any 
subject  or  occasion. 

Wit  and  humor,  however,  are  not  confined  to  the  final 
volume.  Throughout  the  whole  body  of  the  work  the  ele- 
ment of  humor  is  found  in  generous  measure,  but  it  is  espe- 
cially prevalent  in  the  after-dinner  speeches  and  the  lectures. 
A  special  effort  has  been  made  to  find  the  best  stories  and 
sayings  of  modern  humorists.  This  feature  of  the  li]:)rary 
will  make  it  highly  interesting  for  the  family  circle.  Stories 
that  have  convulsed  great  audiences  with  laughter  cannot 
fail  to  evoke  an  echoing  ripple  around  the  fireside. 

The  work  is  embellished  by  numerous  full-page  photo- 
gravures and  illustrations  in  color.  Portraits  of  great  ora- 
tors will  be  found  in  connection  with  their  speeches.  The 
illustrations  also  include  historic  scenes  and  historic  l)uild- 
ings  referred  to  in  the  text.  Many  of  them  are  reproduc- 
tions from  famous  paintings,  and  all  of  them  are  artistic 
and  appropriate. 

Every  page  throughout  the  work  has  been  thoroughly 
indexed  in  order  to  enhance  its  usefulness  for  purposes  of 
reference.     In  this  index  each  speech,  lecture,  and  address 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

is  presented  in  alpliabetical  order,  according  to  its  title. 
Reference  to  each  subject  will  be  found  under  the  general 
classification  to  which  the  subject  in  (juestion  belongs.  An 
entry  will  be  found  of  every  person,  place,  or  event  cited  on 
any  page  of  the  entire  work.  Thus  the  analytical  index 
comprises  a  general  index,  an  index  of  speakers,  an  index  of 
subjects,  an  index  of  illustrations,  an  index  of  stories,  an  in- 
dex of  wit  and  eloquence,  and  an  index  of  events.  The  type, 
paper,  and  press-work  are  all  in  keeping  with  the  standard 
of  excellence  required  in  a  work  of  this  character. 

The  Editors  of  "  Modern  Eloquence  "  have  endeavored  to 
preserve  for  the  present  and  future  generations  the  best 
spoken  thought  of  the  century.  Lectures  that  entertained 
and  electrified  large  audiences  all  over  the  country,  re- 
sponses to  toasts  that  struck  the  right  chord  at  some  mo- 
mentous banquet,  and  occasional  addresses  of  "  piercing  wit 
and  pregnant  thought  "  are  worthy  of  preservation  in  last- 
ing form. 

True  eloquence  is  irresistible.  It  charms  by  its  images  of 
beauty,  it  enforces  an  argument  by  its  vehement  simplicity. 
Orators  whose  speeches  are  "  full  of  sound  and  fury,  signify- 
ing nothing,"  only  prevail  where  truth  is  not  understood, 
for  knowledge  and  simplicity  are  the  foundation  of  all  true 
eloquence.  Eloquence  abounds  in  beautiful  and  natural 
images,  sublime  but  simple  conceptions,  in  passionate  but 
plain  words.  Burning  words  appeal  to  the  emotions,  as  well 
as  to  the  intellect;  they  stir  the  soul  and  touch  the  heart. 

Eloquence,  according  to  the  definition  of  Lyman  Beecher, 
is  "  logic  on  fire."  Sweet  and  honeyed  sentences,  a  profu- 
sion of  platitudinous  phrases,  a  roll  of  resounding  periods, 
may  tickle  the  ear  for  the  time  being,  but  no  speech  of  this 
order  is  worthy  of  permanent  preservation.  The  language 
of  eloquence  is  founded  on  thought,  emotion,  earnestness, 
humor,  and  enthusiasm.  Above  all,  it  requires  innate  talent, 
for  the  secret  of  verbal  magic  was  never  acquired  in  a  school 
of  oratory.  In  its  higher  forms  eloquence  requires  natural 
genius,  profound  knowledge,  a  lofty  imagination,  and  an 
unusual  command  of  the  power  of  language. 

Men  of  literary  genius  have  often  been  gifted  with  the 
talent  of  thoughtful,  cultured,  and  impressive  speech,  and 
some  of  the  speeches  of  this  class  which  have  been  repro- 


xiT  INTRODUCTION 

diiced  in  the  present  collection  fairly  scintillate  with  epi- 
grammatic wit  and  rollicking  humor.  Scholars  and  literary 
men  often  deliver  speeches  that  prove  most  readable  because 
they  know  both  from  intuition  and  training  that  simplicity 
is  the  soul  of  style  in  spoken  as  well  as  in  written  thought. 
Simplicity  and  culture  have  been  largely  considered  by  the 
Committee  of  Selection;  and  take  it,  for  all  in  all,  the  Edi- 
tors and  Publishers  feel  confident  that  the  Library  of 
"  Modern  Eloquence  "  will  be  found  a  most  comprehensive 
compilation  of  recent  oratory — both  in  serious  and  lighter 
vein — and  a  work  which  ought  to  find  a  place  in  every  educa- 
tional institution  and  in  every  public  or  private  library 
throughout  the  land. 


U^^^^  ^^!^    /^!^^^ 


AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING 


IT  would  be  interesting  to  trace  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  a  custom  which  is  usually  thought  modern,  were 
its  beginning  not  lost  in  remote  antiquity.  Imagination  can 
picture  a  tribe  of  feeding  men,  not  too  primitive  to  talk  in- 
telligently as  they  ate,  and  yet  so  numerous  that  mere  table- 
talk  would  not  keep  a  single  subject  of  discussion  before  them 
for  long,  nor  allow  any  but  a  chieftain  to  monopolize  atten- 
tion. At  length  it  might  become  desirable  to  reconcile  op- 
posing views  and  factions,  to  give  direction  to  roused  energies, 
and  a  single  purpose  to  divided  aims. 

The  hour  had  arrived  for  the  men  of  counsel,  who  must 
have  preceded  the  men  of  war  as  soon  as  clan  organization 
succeeded  to  the  personal  struggle  of  every  man  for  himself. 
It  would  be  safe  to  say  that  in  early  times  and  in  the  child- 
hood of  races  a  feast  was  not  an  unnecessary  factor  in  get- 
ting the  assembly  together  and  in  securing  assent  to  proposi- 
tions. This  method  is  efficacious  with  children  still,  and 
adults  have  been  known  to  be  not  entirely  insensible  to  its 
subtle  influence. 

Now  the  truth  of  this  natural  suggestion  of  the  fancy  is 
established  the  moment  that  the  beginnings  of  history  and 
literature  reveal  the  customs  of  those  primeval  men  whose 
ways  are  a  matter  of  authentic  record.  And  it  is  fair  to 
suppose  that  in  so  simple  habits  as  eating  and  speaking  the 
manner  of  them  had  come  down  unchanged,  except  in  refine- 
ment, from  rude  ages  to  the  more  polished  of  which  early 
literatures  are  a  reflection.  In  the  Homeric  poems,  for  ex- 
ample, which  gather  up  the  traditions  of  the  earlier  Epos,  the 
feast  and  the  speech  are  in  frequent  and  close  conjunction, 
and  both  are  often  tributary  to  important  occasions  and 
measures.     An  example  or  two  will  illustrate  this  well-known 

XV 


XVI  AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING 

custom.  The  Iliad,  as  a  war-epic,  cannot  be  expected  to 
furnish  instances  of  social  gathering  with  attendant  feasting 
and  speaking.  Yet  both  are  found  in  two  of  its  most  im- 
portant passages. 

Readers  will  recall  the  haste,  bred  of  disaster  and  fear,  with 
which  panic-stricken  Agamemnon  summoned  the  leaders  of 
the  host  to  meet  in  general  assembly,  and  made  the  cowardly 
proposal  to  abandon  the  siege  of  Troy,  charging  defeat  upon 
Jove,  cruel  and  faithless.  The  prolonged  silence  with 
which  his  faint-hearted  counsel  was  reproved  being  at  length 
broken  by  Diomede's  courageous  rebuke  a  stormy  debate 
appears  likely  to  ensue.  It  is  then  that  the  wisdom  of  a 
skilled  master  of  assemblies  becomes  conspicuous.  Venerable 
Nestor,  orator  pre-eminent,  gracefully  turning  down  his  im- 
petuous junior  with  the  remark  that,  though  he  had  spoken 
bravely  and  well,  the  chief  point  of  the  matter  had  been 
missed,  which  he  himself  will  enlarge  upon.  But  not  then. 
Imminent  as  was  the  need  of  good  counsel  and  immediate 
action  the  mood  of  the  assembly  did  not  suit  him.  There- 
fore he  moves  to  dismiss  the  fighting  men  to  a  plenteous 
meal.  And  to  the  king  he  says,  "  Do  thou,  Agamemnon, 
taking  the  lead  as  supreme  in  command,  assemble  the  elders 
to  a  splendid  feast  in  thy  tent,  one  worthy  thy  station. 
Plenty  of  wine  hast  thou  in  store,  every  appliance  is  thine, 
and  all  will  attend  on  their  sovereign.  Then  let  the  leaders 
consult,  and  of  all  the  counsel  they  offer  choose  thou  the 
wisest  and  best.  Good  need  hath  Greece  of  suggestions, 
prudent  at  once  and  bold,  when  the  fires  of  the  Trojans 
around  us  blaze  fearfully  near,  and  on  this  night's  decision 
depends  the  fate  of  our  army."  But  first  the  feast  and  then 
the  counsel  that  is  to  prevail  in  this  crisis.  Nor  is  it  until 
Atreus'  son  had  convened  the  chiefs  to  a  "  strengthening 
meal,"  and  each  one  "  la}'ing  his  hand  on  the  plenteous 
viands  before  him,  hunger  and  thirst  appeased,"  that  they 
betook  themselves  to  counsel,  Nestor  introducing  his  pro- 
posal to  send  an  embassy  to  Achilles,  the  forlorn  hope  of 
the  Argives. 

It  was  not  a  cheerful  feast  with  speeches  in  the  lighter 
vein  ;  but  all  the  more  does  this  early  example  of  after- 
dinner  discussion  show  the  value  of  its  employment  in  times 
of  great  public  concern.     Incidentally,  also,  a  dignity  is  con- 


AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKINCf  xvu 

ferred  upon  the  custom  itself  which  is  not  always  considered 
as  belonging  to  it.  A  poet  who  knew  something  of  human 
nature  makes  a  wise  counsellor  and  skilled  orator  dispose 
his  hearers  to  attentive  listening  by  removing  the  distrac- 
tions of  hunger  and  thirst,  and  inspiring  the  sentiments  of 
good  fellowship  and  unanimity  which  follow  good  cheer. 

A  similar  scene  occurs  when  the  embassy  which  Nestor  had 
nominated  reaches  Achilles.  Among  the  many  cautions 
which  he  conveyed  to  the  ambassadors,  it  is  not  known  wheth- 
er he  included  the  suggestion  not  to  deliver  their  message 
until  after  the  refreshment  which  the  hospitable  chief  was 
sure  to  provide.  Certain  it  is,  however,  that  they  did  not  de- 
clare their  errand,  curious  as  Achilles  evidently  was  as  to  its 
purport,  until  he  had  ordered  wine  served  and  flesh  roasted, 
and  the  abundant  viands  were  consumed  and  the  meal  con- 
cluded. An  hour  or  two  must  have  passed  in  general 
conversation,  avoiding  war  topics,  before  the  crafty  Ulysses, 
pledging  his  host,  began  to  speak  Avith  a  compliment  to  the 
princely  provision  with  which  they  had  been  received,  and 
made  his  transition  to  the  main  point  by  adding,  "  Matter, 
however,  more  grave  than  feasts  now  claims  our   attention." 

It  was  a  noble  display  of  appeal  and  rejoinder  and  of  as 
sober  and  fateful  speech  as  should  ever  cross  a  table.  And 
although  the  purpose  of  the  embassy  failed,  every  favoring 
precaution  had  been  taken  which  according  to  the  opinion 
and  custom  of  the  time  would  contribute  to  its  successful 
issue.  Of  these  provisions  the  banquet  and  the  speech  are 
chief. 

The  value  of  these  in  connection  with  the  present  topic  is 
representative.  In  a  book  which  more  than  any  other  was 
the  reflection  of  a  remote  past  and  a  model  for  succeeding 
literature  incidents  like  the  above  count  for  much  in  estimat- 
ing the  prevalence  of  a  custom.  If,  moreover,  it  is  found 
under  unfavorable  conditions  in  camps  it  is  not  unnatural  to 
look  for  its  prevalence  in  courts.  Accordingly,  it  is  instruc- 
tive to  turn  from  the  epic  of  War  to  that  of  the  Wandering, 
from  the  Iliad  to  the  Odyssey. 

It  is  to  be  expected  that  the  character  of  the  speech  will 
change  with  the  fortunes  of  the  principal  speaker.  Ulysses 
is  no  longer  the  ambassador  from  a  king  to  an  offended 
general,  but  a  pilgrim  wandering  far   from  his  home,  seeing 


xviii  AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING 

the  cities  and  manners  of  many  men  in  times  of  peace. 
Entertained  at  many  festive  boards  he  listens  to  the  song  of 
bards,  and  the  speech  that  follows  is  of  the  narrative  order. 
He  himself  holds  princely  companies  attentive  by  a  recital 
of  his  adventures  on  land  and  sea.  The  long  relation  in 
the  house  of  Alcinous,  extending  through  four  books,  is  the 
sequence  to  a  feast  in  which  the  raconteur  sat  on  a  throne 
near  the  king  "  dividing  portions  of  flesh  and  drinking  mixed 
wine."  So  Telemachus,  in  Mcnelaus'  palace,  had  already  re- 
lated  the  state  of  affairs  in  Ithaca,  but  not  until  the  host 
had  commanded  him  and  his  companions  to  "  taste  food 
and  rejoice,  setting  before  them  the  fat  back  of  an  ox  and 
all  kinds  of  flesh,  with  bread  and  many  dainties,  and  near 
them  golden  cups."  And  so  on  through  all  the  poem  ;  and 
it  might  be  added  through  all  the  literatures  of  the  ancients 
the  feasting  and  the  speaking  go  together  in  the  social  and 
often  in  the  business  assemblies  of  men.  Enough,  how- 
ever, has  been  cited  from  the  principal  author  of  remote 
antiquity  and  the  inspirer  and  model  of  later  writers  to  es- 
tablish the  general  prevalence  of  the  custom.  He  had 
often  witnessed  it,  as  he  had  seen  shields  and  spears, 
chariots  and  ships.  He  portrayed  what  he  had  seen  with 
an  accuracy  which  was  unquestioned,  giving  to  the  banquet- 
speech  the  dignity  of  an  antiquity  equal  to  that  which 
belongs  to  any  other  form  of  public  address,  and  the  impor- 
tance which  pertains  to  great  crises  and  interesting  episodes 
in  human  affairs. 

There  is  little  need  of  tracing  the  custom  through  historic 
centuries.  It  was  rife  in  primeval  times  ;  it  obtains  now  ; 
and  as  the  elemental  habits  of  social  life  have  continued 
without  much  change  in  the  intervening  ages,  it  may  be 
safely  concluded  that  these  two  customs  of  feasting  and 
speaking  for  a  purpose  have  gone  together.  It  will  be  of 
greater  consequence  to  observe  some  of  the  conditions  and 
qualities  which  distinguish  the  after-dinner  speech  from 
other  forms  of  address,  and  to  note  some  factors  which  con- 
tribute to  its  efficiency. 

Of  the  two  quantities  which  are  to  be  reckoned  with  in 
the  practical  worth  of  any  speech,  namely,  the  speaker  and 
the  audience,  the  latter  is  the  lesser  on  festive  occasions. 
At  least   it   is  reduced   to   its  lowest  critical  j)ower,  and  is 


AFTER-DINNKR    SPlOAKIXCi  xix 

raised  to  the  liiLjlicst  point  of  charity  and  content.  The 
primitive  "  desire  of  meat  and  drink  bein^  takeii  away,"  as 
the  old  poets  have  it,  attention  can  be  given  unreservedly 
to  the  feast  of  reason  ;  that  is,  if  the  reasoning  be  not  too 
hard  to  follow  with  diminished  mental  activity  consequent 
upon  relaxation.  Also,  with  the  proverbial  good  nature 
which  succeeds  to  dining  almost  any  proposition  will  be 
assented  to  that  does  not  cross  a  listener's  political  or  re- 
ligious principles  at  right  angles.  A  certain  openness  of 
mind  is  apt  to  prevail  as  the  result  of  genial  influences, 
large  companionship,  and  variety  of  sentiment  expressed. 
The  soul  of  the  guest  expands,  rises,  and  diffuses  itself  like 
the  all-including  post-prandial  smoke,  denied  to  the  ancients, 
which  so  softens  and  narcoti/ces  the  atmosphere,  making 
drowsy  the  sentinel  nerves,  that  men  have  been  known  to  ap- 
plaud at  midnight  statements  which  they  reject  with  sus- 
picion next  noonday.  Such  indulgent  mood  also  contributes 
to  ready  appreciation  of  what  is  said,  if  pitched  in  the  right 
key.  The  one  faculty  which  is  sure  to  be  wide  awake  is 
the  sense  of  humor,  and  a  little  Avit  will  go  a  great  way. 
Altogether  the  audience  is  in  its  most  favorable  temper, 
and  in  striking  contrast  to  conditions  which  sometimes  pre- 
vail in  political,  educational,  and  religious  assemblies. 
Properly  and  fairly  treated  it  will  be  neither  excited, 
bored  nor  drowsy,  but  sympathetic,  appreciative  and  in- 
spiring. It  will  furnish  its  own  share  of  the  entertainment, 
if  the  other  contributor  succeeds  in  furnishing  his. 

Of  course  the  weight  of  responsibility  falls  upon  the 
speaker,  and  it  is  not  small,  notwithstanding  the  favoring 
conditions.  These  he  will  be  slow  to  presume  upon.  The 
guest  who  has  been  notified  of  what  will  be  expected  of 
him — and  no  other  is  contemplated  here — will  first  of  all 
not  interpret  literally  the  intimation  that  he  may  be  called 
upon  "  to  make  a  few  informal  remarks."  That  is  a  euphe- 
mism— a  leaf  which  covers  a  trap.  Or  if  the  remarks  are 
to  be  not  formal,  it  will  be  understood  that  they  are  not, 
on  this  account  to  be  ill-considered,  without  form,  and  void. 

Just  here  the  man  of  experience  takes  pains  to  discover 
in  advance  how  large  and  what  sort  of  a  company  is  coming 
together,  how  many  and  who  the  other  speakers  are  to  be, 
and  Avhat  the  purpose  of  the  occasion  is,  if  it  has  a  purpose 


XX  AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING 

beyond  good  cheer,  as  most  festal  occasions  nowadays 
have.  Such  inquiries  are  preliminary  and  pre-requisite  to 
any  preparation  he  may  wish  to  make  ;  and  few  will  be  so 
rash  as  to  make  no  preparation,  since  it  is  not  a  speech 
merely,  but  a  timely  speech,  that  tells. 

Another  snare  that  an  unwary  guest  may  easily  fall  into  is 
the  delusion  that  the  inspiration  of  the  place  and  the  hour 
will  put  words  into  his  mouth.  It  is  just  as  likely  to  take 
them  out  of  his  mouth  and  ideas  out  of  his  head.  There 
are  accompaniments  of  a  feast  which  are  not  intellectually 
stimulating.  Things  which  make  an  audience  well-conditioned 
do  not  favor  the  speaker  in  like  manner.  Bacon  says  :  *'  Read- 
ing maketh  a  full  man,  writing  an  exact  man,  conference  a 
ready  man  ;  "  but  a  dinner  never  served  the  last  two  ends, 
admirable  as  it  may  be  for  the  first.  Nor  is  the  full  man 
at  his  best  for  speaking.  Let  the  appeal  be  to  those 
who  find  it  necessary  to  toy  with  course  after  course,  pre- 
ferring to  sacrifice  appetite  to  intellect,  choosing  to  spoil  a 
dinner,  rather  than  a  speech.  There  are  doubtless  those 
who  have  no  apprehensions  of  this  kind,  nor  of  the  conse- 
quences of  antagonism  between  flesh  and  spirit,  but  they  are 
as  rare  as  Homeric  orators  and  belong  to  a  heroic  age.  In 
these  degenerate  days  the  ordinary  man  will  not  attempt 
feats  of  eating  and  speaking,  especially  in  the  close  con- 
junction which  distinguished  the  mighty  in  war  and  elo- 
quence on  the  Dardan  shore. 

Neither  does  the  foresighted  guest  hope  for  suggestive 
inspiration  from  other  speakers  to  put  him  on  the  right 
track  or  to  stir  opposing  sentiments.  Debate  has  its  own 
place  and  time,  but  not  at  a  public  dinner,  unless  the  dis- 
cussion of  a  disputed  question  has  been  made  the  purpose 
of  assembling,  as  it  seldom  is  made.  Opposing  sentiments 
and  their  defence  are  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  a  festive  com- 
pany. Even  on  one  of  the  most  unfortunate  occasions  of 
which  there  is  an  ancient  record  it  is  said,  that  "  the  people 
sat  down  to  cat  and  drink  and  rose  up  to  play" — not  to 
argue  and  dispute.  And  in  more  seemly  gatherings,  the 
spirit  of  contention  and  debate  should  not  prevail  nor  any 
speaker  hope  to  strike  fire  from  opinions  and  sentiments 
opposed  to  his  own. 

Besides   there  is  the   risk  that  all  commonplaces  will  be 


AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING  XXl 

exhausted  before  one's  turn  comes,  unless  he  is  the  first 
speaker,  who  may  preempt  as  much  of  the  entire  field  as  he 
chooses.  It  is  a  skilled  speaker  who  can  warm  over  what 
others  have  uttered  without  getting  charged  with  plagiarism 
or  being  called  a  parrot.  Dependence  on  fortuitous  aid 
will  be  abandoned  at  the  start  by  those  who  wish  to  be 
assured  of  a  reasonable  success.  It  is  an  instance  of 
"  every  man  for  himself " — and  frequently  of  the  rest  of  the 
f proverb. 

By  this  time  it  will  be  suspected  that  some  preparation 
is  deemed  necessary  for  an  after-dinner  speech,  as  in  the 
case  of  other  speaking.  If  the  known  practice  of  many  of 
the  best  speakers  is  worth  anything,  it  may  be  inferred  that 
very  careful  prevision  and  provision  are  needful.  Prevision 
to  see  what  is  likely  to  be  timely  and  effective  :  provision 
to  secure  it  and  order  it  in  effective  sequence.  Assuming 
that  foresight  has  been  exercised,  something  may  be  said 
of  the  kind  of  preparation  which  will  be  most  serviceable 
for  after-dinner  remarks. 

This  word  "  reinarks  "  is  the  term  by  which  most  speakers 
prefer  to  designate  such  efforts  as  they  choose  to  make  on 
these  occasions.  They  do  not  dignify  them  by  the  more 
formal  title  of  a  speech,  much  less  an  oration.  Accordingly 
the  preparation  to  be  made  is  not  such  as  would  be  required 
for  either  of  these  more  pretentious  performances.  All 
appearance  of  division  into  the  sections  of  exordium,  argu- 
ment, and  peroration  would  be  as  much  out  of  place  as  an 
oration  itself.  At  the  same  time  perhaps  a  greater  skill 
may  be  required  to  accomplish  the  ends  for  which  these 
divisions  are  essential  in  more  elaborate  addresses.  There 
is  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  ending  to  a  paragraph  even, 
and  much  more  to  any  discourse,  long  or  short.  Ordinary 
conversation  has  its  conventional  beginning  and  ending, 
which  are  not  like  the  burden  of  it  between  the  salutation 
and  the  parting  of  the  interlocutors.  Remarks  when  one 
has  the  floor  cannot  violate  this  natural  imi)ulsc  ;  and  the 
opening  sentences  will  often  present  more  difficulty  than 
in  conversation  where  tlie  much-worn  weather  topic  always 
offers  common  ground  of  agreement  as  a  starting-point. 
The  amenities  of  the  occasion  and  the  purpose  of  the  com- 
ing together  generally  serve  the  toastmaster  or  ruler  of  the 


xxll  AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING 

feast  and  one  or  two  more  a  good  turn,  but  arc  not  to  be 
depended  upon  by  every  one.  A  man  of  ready  wit  may 
catch  a  starting  word  from  the  chairman's  introduction  or 
from  the  last  speaker,  if  it  wih  fit  on  to  what  he  is  going  to 
say.  This  certainly  gives  an  unepremeditated  air  at  the 
start  which  is  most  desirable,  but  to  rely  upon  such  a  send- 
off  is  risky.  At  the  beginning,  of  all  places,  one  needs  to 
be  sure  of  getting  under  way  without  hesitation  and  entan- 
glement. And  although  it  is  not  the  place  for  anything 
profound,  it  is,  all  in  all,  the  most  trying  part  of  the  speech. 

The  pat  anecdote  is  useful  here,  especially  if  it  seems  to 
have  fallen  accidentally  into  the  line  of  remark.  It  is  a 
powerful  magnet  for  attracting  immediate  and  universal 
attention,  and  a  capital  pointer  to  indicate  the  direction 
which  the  speaker  is  going  to  take,  and  may  be  made  the 
keynote  of  his  discourse.  Fortunate  is  the  man  who  has 
his  quiver  full  of  them  and  knows  which  one  to  draw  and 
when.  There  is  but  one  drawback  to  the  use  of  an  anecdote 
as  he  rises  to  speak.  It  may  arouse  an  attention  which  can 
be  maintained  only  by  a  corresponding  interest  in  the  mat- 
ter that  follows.  To  make  this,  in  its  way,  as  interesting  as 
a  good  story,  is  possible,  but  difificult. 

For  this  reason  the  burden  of  preparation  will  fall  upon  the 
body  of  the  speech.  Aspeaker  who  takes  the  time  which  has 
been  surrendered  from  sleeping  hours,  or  which  others  might 
occupy,  ought  to  offer  something  by  way  of  compensation. 
He  will  not  merely  say  something,  but  will  have  something 
to  say.  It  may  not  be  anything  vastly  wise  or  erudite  or 
mightily  instructive  or  amusing.  But  it  should  be  sensible, 
to  some  point,  and  in  harmony  with  the  occasion.  It  is  not 
always  an  easy  task  to  do  this  and  may  need  more  effort 
than  the  speaker  is  willing  to  put  into  it.  If,  however,  he 
should  conclude  that  rambling  talk  will  answer  as  well,  and 
trust  to  the  inspiration  of  the  hour  and  the  table  and  the 
company,  they  may  fail  him. 

"^lo  minute  suggestions  can  be  made  as  to  the  details  of 
preparation.  Assemblies  are  convened  for  all  sorts  of  ob- 
jects— usually  with  a  financial  appeal  for  a  good  cause  in 
the  background  or  foreground  even.  To  become  an  effect- 
ive advocate  requires  acquaintance  with  the  subject,  sym- 
pathy with  its  demands,  and  devotion  to  its  aims.     These 


AFTER-DINNER    SPEAKING  xxi'ii 

qualities  give  power  to  any  words  that  arc  an  expression  of 
them — a  few  suggestions  from  a  man  of  affairs  often  avail- 
ing more  than  flights  of  wordy  enthusiasm. 

Or  the  feast  may  be  of  a  reminiscent,  commemorative, 
or  congratulatory  order.  Good  taste,  generous  sentiment, 
sober  and  fond  recollection  may  be  more  needful  than 
knowledge  and  zeal.  Indirect  praise  without  adulation,  the 
best  phase  of  life  and  character  presented,  to  which  all 
portraiture  has  a  right.  For  each  and  every  kind  of  remark 
the  preparation  will  be  according  to  the  kind.  Fitness  is 
the  single  and  all-pervading  demand.  In  general,  however, 
it  must  be  said  that  lightness  and  good  humor  will  be  the 
prevailing  tone  on  most  occasions,  as  becomes  their  festal 
character.  More  serious  ones  are  not  usually  introduced  by 
the  pleasures  of  the  table,  and  require  a  more  elaborate 
preparation.  The  labor  given  to  lighter  remark,  it  may  be 
added,  is  often  in  the  direction  of  abundance  rather  than 
of  profundity.  Abundance  for  the  reason  that  previous 
speakers  may  make  sad  inroads  upon  what  first  occurs  to 
one  to  say,  and  that  he  may  need  to  carry  more  oil  to  the 
feast  than  he  expects  to  burn.  The  late  speaker  may  have 
little  of  his  accumulation  of  material  left  untouched  by  his 
predecessors.  Therefore  his  stock  should  be  large  and 
various.  Moreover,  he  should  allow  some  margin  for  forget- 
fulness  and  recall  Lowell's  remark,  and  Goethe's,  and 
Thackeray's  too  :  "  This  evening  I  made  the  best  speech  of 
my  life, — but  it  was  in  my  carriage  as  I  was  coming  home, 
saying  the  things  I  forgot  to  say  to  the  company." 

There  is  a  third  and  final  section  of  every  speech,  long  or 
short,  which  has  its  own  difficulties.  If  it  is  hard  to  begin 
prosperously,  it  is  sometimes  harder  to  close  gracefully  and 
effectively.  In  the  first  place  it  is  important  to  know  when 
to  conclude.  The  best  time  may  be  very  soon  after  the 
opening  sentence.  The  guest  who  was  called  on  unex- 
pectedly was  as  wise  as  witty  when  he  remarked,  that  great 
speakers  were  no  longer  available :  "  Demosthenes  is  dead, 
Cicero  is  dead,  and  I  am  not  feeling  well  myself,"  and  sat 
down  !  But  he  was  a  man  who  might  have  entertained  the 
company  for  hours. 

It  is  fatal,  however,  for  many  to  suppose  that  because 
they  are  asked  to  speak  a  long  speech  is  desired.     The  hours 


XXIV  AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING 

are  apt  to  be  few  and  the  speakers  many.  But  extempo- 
raneous talkers  are  the  worst  of  time-keepers.  The  fear  of 
not  having  enough  to  fill  a  few  minutes  often  carries  one  on  to 
many  until  all  consciousness  of  time  is  gone.  Or  the  elation 
bred  by  fluency  may  produce  the  same  result.  Then,  too,  the 
respectful  attention  or  easy  applause  of  a  good-natured  com- 
pany may  be  delusive.  It  is  not  an  unknown  occurrence 
that  an  erudite  and  long-winded  speaker  has  mistaken 
the  stamping  which  was  intended  to  silence  him  for  genuine 
applause,  and  has  continued  to  labor  on  for  the  supposed 
gratification  of  his  tired  hearers  after  he  would  himself  have 
gladly  closed.  Therefore,  it  is  not  always  safe  to  trust  to 
the  appearance  of  an  audience  for  the  gauge  of  interest.  A 
watch  in  the  hands  of  a  next  neighbor  at  the  table  is  more 
trustworthy.  Even  the  rare  speaker  from  a  manuscript  on 
the  cloth  has  an  advantage  with  respect  to  time  limit.  He 
knows  how  long  he  will  be  in  reading  it.  It  would  be  well 
if  the  rule  of  the  debater's  signal  could  be  established  by 
general  consent,  and  the  clink  of  a  tumbler  notify  the  speaker 
when  to  begin  to  make  an  end.  Then  he  could  make  it  in 
such  time  as  he  might  allow  himself  or  be  allowed. 

If  he  has  a  purpose  to  gain  or  a  cause  to  further,  the 
close  of  his  speech,  according  to  the  common  rule  of  ad- 
dress, will  be  convincing  or  persuasive.  There  will  be  a 
climax  of  some  sort  as  the  outcome  of  what  has  gone  be- 
fore. It  may  be  serious  or  humorous,  but  the  weight  of  it, 
like  the  weight  of  a  hammer,  will  be  at  the  far  end,  if  any- 
thing is  to  be  enforced  and  a  lasting  impression  left.  This 
does  not  imply  that  the  impression  of  the  speech  as  a 
whole  is  not  to  be  considered,  nor  that  all  its  grace,  fitness 
and  power  are  to  be  reserved  for  the  closing  sentences. 
These  simply  gather  up  the  thoughts  that  have  been  pre- 
sented and  mass  their  appropriateness  and  their  force. 

This  ordering  and  prearrangement  of  a  speech  may  seem 
too  careful  and  formal  for  so  informal  remark  as  an  after- 
dinner  speech  is  supposed  to  be.  To  be  sure  there  are  all 
grades  and  sorts  of  such  discourses,  as  there  are  all  kinds  of 
occasions  and  dinners,  which  themselves  are  often  extremely 
formal  and  elaborate.  An  address  which  should  resemble  a 
sumptuous  banquet  in  its  artificiality  and  length  should  not 
be  contemplated   for  a  moment.     Yet  there  are  occasions 


AFTER-DINNER   SPEAKING  xxv 

whose  dignity  and  importance  demand  an  expenditure  of 
thought  and  care  in  furnishing  an  intellectual  feast  commen- 
surate with  the  provision  that  has  been  made  for  the  refine- 
ments of  appetite.  It  is  with  these  important  occasions  in 
mind  that  the  foregoing  pages  have  been  written,  since 
lesser  and  informal  gatherings  will  furnish  their  own  standard 
of  performance.  If  the  greater  demand  is  handsomely  met, 
the  lesser  is  easily  provided  for. 

In  the  collection  of  speeches  here  presented  there  will  be 
found  much  to  confirm  the  position  taken,  that  there  is 
room  for  the  exercise  of  great  art  and  skill  in  this  branch 
of  public  address.  Its  seeming  informality  requires  an  art 
that  conceals  art.  Needful  lightness  of  expression  may  cover 
thoughts  that  are  profound.  Good  humor  may  render  pala- 
table truths  that  are  in  themselves  distasteful.  Shrewd  presen- 
tation may  obtain  a  hearing  for  unwelcome  facts,  and  unfail- 
ing tact  may  lead  up  to  propositions  that  would  have  been 
summarily  dismissed  at  the  outset.  The  diligent  reader  of 
these  speeches  will  find  illustrations  of  these  and  similar 
qualities  in  addresses  of  one  and  another  master  of  an  art  as 
rare  as  it  is  felicitous.  Such  perusal  cannot  fail  to  be  of 
service  to  those  who  sooner  or  later  are  likely  to  be  called 
upon  to  contribute  their  Avord  of  good  humor  or  good  cheer, 
of  wisdom  or  counsel,  of  encomium  or  eulogy,  before  the  most 
receptive  and  appreciative  of  audiences  in  an  after-dinner 
speech. 


^r^^/^T-X^J-Tp-^ 


^^E4^z^^, 


Banquet  of  the 
Sons  of  the  Revolution 

IN  COMMEMORATION  OF 

Washington's  Birthday 

Delmonico's,  February  22nd. 


ILLUMINATED  DINNER    CARD 

Photo-engraving  in  colors  after  a  design  by  Tiffany 

The  accompanying  annual  dinner  card,  reproduced  by  permission  of  the 
Sons  of  the  Revolution,  is  an  excellent  example  of  the  artistic  qualities 
which  many  of  these  cards  possess.  The  original  is  about  twice  the  size 
of  the  present  illustration . 


CONTENTS 


VOLUME  I 


Adams,  Charles  Francis 
The  Lessons  of  Life 

Arnold,  Sir  Edwin 

Ties  of  Kinship  and  Common  Speech 

Arnold,  Matthew 

The  Realm  of  Literature 

Ball,  Sir  Robert 

Kinship  of  Art  and  Science     . 

Bancroft,  George 

Tribute  to  WilHam  Cullen  Bryant  . 

Beaconsfield,  Lord  (Benjamin  Disraeli) 
Peace  With  Honor 
The  King  of  the  Belgians 

Beck,  James  M. 

The  Democracy  of  the  "  Mayflower  " 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward 

Religious  Freedom  . 
The  Glory  of  New  England     . 
Tribute  to  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe 
Merchants  and  Ministers 
Home  Rule  for  Ireland    . 
Tribute  to  Munkacsy 

Bergen,  Tunis  Garrett 

The  First  Settlers  of  New  Netherlands 

Beveridge,  Albert  J. 

The  Republic  That  Never  Retreats  . 


.  7 
.  14 
.  16 
.     18 

.     21 

•  30 

•  33 

41 
46 

51 
54 
60 
62 

64 

70 


XXVUl 


CONTENTS 


Blaine,  James  Gillespie 

Our  Merchant  Marine     . 

Blouet,  Paul  (Max  O'Rell) 
Monsieur  and  Madame   . 

Brewster,  Benjamin  Harris 

Bench  and  Bar  of  Pennsylvania 

Bromley,  Isaac  Hill 

Connecticut's  Part  in  the  Business 

Bryan,  William  Jennings 
America's  Mission  . 


Bryant,  William  Cullen 
Louis  Kossuth 
A  Birthday  Address 
The  Press 


Butler,  Benjamin  Franklin 
Our  Debt  to  England 

Caldwell,  Henry  C. 

A  Blend  of  Cavalier  and  Puritan 

Carnegie,  Andrew 

The  Scotch-American 

Carr,  Lewis  E. 

The  Lawyer  and  the  Hod  Carrier 

Carson,  Hampton  L. 

Our  Navy        .... 

Chamberlain,  Joseph 

The  Future  of  the  British  Empire 

Choate,  Joseph  Hodges 

A  Test  Examination 

Tribute  to  Lord  Houghton 

The  Bench  and  the  Bar  . 

The  Sorcerer's  Response 

The  Pilgrim  Mothers 

America's  Golden  Age    . 

Harvard  University 

British  Evacuation  of  New  York 


73 
79 
82 

86 

94 

100 
103 

107 

no 
112 
119 
127 

133 
141 

147 
152 
156 

159 
164 
167 

173 
179 


CONTENTS 


XXIX 


Choate,  Joseph  Hodgf.s  (continued) 

Sons  and  Guests  of  Old  Harvard     . 

Tribute  to  General  Miles 

Peace  Between  Nations  .... 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph 

Political  Life  and  Thought  in  England    . 

Clemens,  Samuel  Langhorne  (Mark  Twain) 
New  England  Weather 
A  "  Littery  "  Episode 
The  Babies 

Unconscious  Plagiarism 
Mistaken  Identity    . 
Woman,  God  Bless  Herl 

Cleveland,  Grover 

True  Democracy 

CocKRAN,  William  Bourke 

Our  Constitutional  System 

CoGiiLAN,  Captain  Joseph  Bullock 
The  Battle  of  Manila     . 

Coleridge,  Lord 

Henry  Irving's  Versatility 
In  Golden  Chains    . 

Collins,  Patrick  A. 

Ireland's  Dream  of  Nationality 

Collins,  Wilkie 

American  Hospitality 

CoLLYER,  Robert 

Saxon  Grit       .... 
Tribute  to  Edwin  Booth  . 
The  Church  and  the  Stage 

Conkling,  Roscoe 

The  State  of  New  York  . 

Coudert,  Frederic  Rene 

The  City  of  New  York    . 
Our  Clients     .... 


187 

193 
195 

201 

210 
214 
218 
221 
223 
225 

229 

232 

239 

246 
253 

257 
261 

263 
266 
267 

269 

277 
282 


XXX 


CONTENTS 


Cox,  Samuel  Sullivan 

Smith  and  So  Forth 

Curtis,  George  William 

Liberty  Under  the  Law  . 
Noblesse  ObHge 
Greeting  the  Autocrat 
The  Enghsh-Speaking  Race 
Commerce  and  Literature 
Lowell's  Americanism 

Dana,  Charles  Anderson 

Diplomacy  and  the  Press 
New  England  in  Journalism 

Dana,  Richard  Henry 

Russia  and  the  United  States 


286 

290 

295 
299 

303 

307 
312 

318 
321 

323 


Depew,  Chauncey  Mitchell 

Woman 327 

Welcome  to  Mayor  Cooper 

330 

The  Empire  State   . 

333 

Our  English  Visitors 

338 

Ireland     .... 

343 

The  New  Netherlanders 

349 

Yale  University 

356 

Unsolved  Problems 

361 

The  Beggars  of  the  Sea  . 

366 

Citizens  of  the  World     . 

370 

The  Mutations  of  Time . 

373 

A  Senatorial  Forecast     . 

380 

Derby,  Earl  of  (Edward  H.  S.  Stanley) 

The  Diplomatist 387 

Dickens,  Charles 

Friends  Across  the  Sea  ......  389 

Tribute  to  Washington  Irving 

•  394 

Macready  and  Bulwer-Lytton 

•  398 

The  Actor's  Art      . 

.  401 

English  Friendliness  for  Ame 

rica  . 

405 

CONTENTS  xxxi 

PACK 

Dix,  John  Adams 

The  Flag — the  Old  Flag 410 

Draper,  William  Henry 

Our  Medical  Advisers 415 

Dyke,  Henry  van 

The  Typical  Dutchman  .         .         .        .         .         .418 


ILL  USTRA  TIONS 


VOLUME  I 

FACING 
PAGE 

Thomas  P..  Reed Frontispiece 

Photogravure  after  a  i)hotograph  from  life 

Illuminated  Toast  Card xxvii 

Photo-engraving  in  colors  after  an  original  design 
by  Tiffany 

Lord  Eeaconsi-ield  (Benjamin  Disraeli)  ...       21 
Photogravure  after  a  photograph  from  life 

James  Gillespie  Blaine 73 

Photogravure  after  an  engraving  by  Hall 

Joseph  Hodges  Choate I47 

Photogravure  after  an  engraving  by  Williams 

Samuel  Langiiorxe  Clemens  (Mark  Twain)    .         .     210 
Photogravure  after  a  photograph  from  life 

Ciiauncey  Mitchell  Depew 327 

Photogravure  after  a  photograph  from  life 

Charles  Dickens 3^9 

Photogravure  after  an  engraving 


CHARLES   FRANCIS   ADAMS 


THE  LESSONS  OF  LIFE 

[Speech  of  Charles  Francis  Adams,  dehvered  at  the  Harvard   Ahimni  dinner, 
in  Cambridge,  Mass.,  June  26,  1S95.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Alumni: — 
Some  years  ago  a  distinguished  literary  character,  as  well  as 
accomplished  and  lovable  man, — since  gone  over  to  the  silent 
majority, — stood  here,  as  I  now  am  standing,  having  a  few 
hours  before  received  Harvard's  highest  degree.  Not  himself 
a  child  of  the  University,  he  had  been  invitedhcre  astrangcr, 
— though  in  Cambridge  he  was  by  no  means  a  stranger  in  a 
strange  land, — to  receive  well-deserved  recognition  for  the 
good  life-work  he  had  done,  and  the  high  standard  of  char- 
acter he  had  ever  maintained.  When  called  upon  by  the 
presiding  officer  of  that  occasion,  as  I  now  am  called  upon 
by  you,  he  responded  by  saying  that  the  day  before  he  had 
left  his  New  York  home  to  come  to  Cambridge  a  simple, 
ordinary  man  ;  he  would  go  back  "  ennobled." 

In  America  patents  of  nobility  may  not  be  conferred, — 
the  fundamental  law  itself  inhibits  ;  so,  when  from  the  Mother 
Country  the  name  of  Sir  Henry  Irving  comes  sounding  across 
the  Atlantic,  we  cannot  answer  in  reply  with  a  Sir  Joseph 
Jefferson,  but  we  do  not  less,  perhaps,  in  honor  of  great 
Shakespeare's  craft,  by  inviting  him  to  whom  you  have  this 
day  given  the  greatest  ovation  on  any  bestowed,  to  come  up 
and  join  the  family  circle  which  surrounds  America's  oldest 
Alma  Mater.  Still,  figurative  though  it  was,  for  George 
William  Curtis  to  refer  to  Harvard's  honorary  degree  as  an 
ennoblement  was  a  graceful  form  of  speech  ;  but  I,  to  the 
manner  born,  stand  here  under  similar  circumstances  in  a 

I 


2  CHARLES   FRANCIS   ADAMS 

different  spirit.  Memory  insensibly  reverts  to  other  days — 
other  scenes. 

Forty-two  years  ago  President  Eliot  and  I  passed  each 
other  on  the  steps  of  University  Hall — he  coming  down  them 
with  his  freshly  signed  bachelor's  degree  in  his  hand,  while  I 
ascended  them  an  anxious  candidate  for  admission  to  the 
college.  His  apprenticeship  was  over;  mine  was  about  to 
begin.  For  twenty-six  eventful  years  now  he  has  presided 
over  the  destinies  of  the  University,  and  at  last  we  meet 
here  again  ;  I  to  receive  from  his  hands  the  diploma  which 
signifies  that  the  days  of  my  travels — my  WandcrjaJirc — as 
well  as  my  apprenticeship,  are  over,  and  that  the  journey- 
man is  at  length  admitted  to  the  circle  of  master-workmen. 
So,  while  Mr.  Curtis  declared  that  he  went  away  from  here 
with  a  sense  of  ennoblement,  my  inclination  is  to  sit  down, 
not  metaphorically  but  in  fact,  on  yonder  steps  of  University 
Hall,  and  think  for  a  little — somewhat  wearily,  perhaps — 
over  the  things  I  have  seen  and  the  lessons  I  have  learned 
since  I  first  ascended  those  steps  when  the  last  half  of  the 
century  now  ending  had  only  just  begun — an  interval  longer 
than  that  during  which  the  children  of  Israel  were  con- 
demned to  tarry  in  the  wilderness  ! 

And,  were  I  so  to  do,  I  am  fain  to  confess  two  feelings 
would  predominate  :  wonder  and  admiration — wonder  over 
the  age  in  which  I  have  lived,  mingled  with  admiration  for 
the  results  which  in  it  have  been  accomplished  and  the  hero- 
ism displayed.  And  yet  this  was  not  altogether  what  the 
prophet  voices  of  my  apprenticeship  had,  I  remember,  led 
me  to  expect ;  for  in  those  days,  and  to  a  greater  degree 
than  seems  to  be  the  case  at  present,  we  had  here  at  Cam- 
bridge prophet  voices  which  in  living  words  continually  ex- 
horted us.  Such  were  Tennyson,  Thackeray,  Emerson,  and, 
perhaps,  most  of  all  Carlj'le — Thomas  Carlyle  with  his 
"  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,"  his  "  Latter  Day  Pamphlets," 
his  worship  of  the  Past  and  his  scorn  for  the  Present,  his  con- 
tempt for  what  he  taught  us  to  term  this  "  rag-gathering 
age."  We  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  great  literary  artist,  our 
'prentice  ears  drank  in  his  utterances  ;  to  us  he  was  inspired. 
The  literary  artist  remains.  As  such  we  bow  down  before 
him  now  even  more  than  we  bowed  down  before  him  then  ; 
but  how  different  have  we  found  the  aije   in  which    our  lot 


THE    LESSONS   OF    LIF^E  3 

was  cast  from  that  he  had  taught  us  to  expect !  I  have  been 
but  a  journeyman.  Only  to  a  small,  a  very  small  extent,  I 
know,  can  I,  like  the  Ulysses  of  that  other  of  our  prophet 
voices,  declare — 

"  I  am  a  part  of  all  that  I  have  met." 

None  the  less, — 

"  Much  have  I  seen  and  known;  cities  of  men 
And  manners,  climates,  councils,  governments; 
And  drunk  delight  of  battle  with  my  peers, 
Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy." 

We  were  told  in  those,  our  'prentice  days,  of  the  heroism 
of  the  past  and  the  materialism  of  our  present,  when  "  who 
but  a  fool  would  have  faith  in  a  tradesman's  wares  or  his 
word,"  and  "  only  not  all  men  lied  ;  "  and  yet,  when,  in 
1853,  you,  Mr.  President,  the  young  journeyman,  descended, 
as  I,  the  coming  apprentice,  ascended  those  steps,  "the cob- 
web woven  across  the  cannon's  mouth  "  still  shook  "  its 
threaded  tears  in  the  wind."  Eight  years  later  the  cobweb 
was  swept  away ;  and  though,  as  the  names  graven  on  the 
tablets  at  the  entrance  of  this  hall  bear  witness,  "  many  were 
crushed  in  the  clash  of  jarring  claims,"  yet  we  too  felt  the 
heart  of  a  people  beat  with  one  desire,  and  witnessed  the 
sudden  making  of  splendid  names.  I  detract  nothing  from 
the  halo  of  knighthood  which  surrounds  the  heads  of  Sidney 
and  of  15ayard  ;  but  I  was  the  contemporary  and  friend  of 
Savage,  of  Lowell,  and  of  Shaw.  I  had  read  of  battles  and 
"  the  imminent  deadly  breach  ;  "  but  it  was  given  to  me  to 
stand  on  the  field  of  Gettysburg  when  the  solid  earth  trem- 
bled under  the  assault  of  that  Confederate  Virginian  column, 
then  performing  a  feat  of  arms  than  which  I  verily  believe 
none  in  all  recorded  warfare  was  ever  more  persistent,  more 
deadly  or  more  heroic. 

And  our  prophet  spoke  to  us  of  the  beauty  of  silent  work, 
and  he  held  up  before  us  the  sturdy  patience  of  the  past  in 
sharp  contrast  with  the  garrulous  self-evidence  of  that  deter- 
iorated present,  of  which  we  were  to  be  a  part ;  and  yet, 
scarcely  did  we  stand  on  the  threshold  of  our  time,  when  a 
modest  English  naturalist  and  observer  broke  years  of 
silence  by  quietly  uttering  the  word  which  relegated  to  the 
domain  of  fable  that  which,  since   the  days  of   Moses,  had 


4  CHARLES    FRANCIS   ADAMS 

been  accepted  as  the  foundation  of  religious  belief.  In  the 
time  of  our  apprenticeship  we  still  read  of  the  mystery  of 
Africa  in  the  pages  of  Herodotus,  while  the  sources  of  the 
Nile  were  as  unknown  to  our  world  as  to  the  world  of  the 
Pharaohs;  then  one  day  a  patient,  long-suffering,  solitary 
explorer  emerged  from  the  wilderness,  and  the  secret  was 
revealed.  In  our  own  time  and  before  our  purblind  eyes, 
scarcely  realizing  what  they  saw  or  knowing  enough  to 
wonder,  Livingstone  eclipsed  Columbus,  and  Darwin  rewrote 
Genesis.  The  Paladin  we  had  been  told  was  a  thing  of  the 
past ;  ours  was  the  era  of  the  commonplace  ;  and,  lo  !  Gari- 
baldi burst  like  a  rocket  above  the  horizon,  and  the  legends 
of  Colchis  and  the  crusader  were  eclipsed  by  the  newspaper 
record  of  current  events.  The  eloquent  voice  from  Cheyne 
Row  still  echoed  in  our  ears,  lamenting  the  degeneracy  of  a 
time  given  over  to  idle  talk  and  the  worship  of  mammon — 
defiled  by  charlatans  and  devoid  of  workers  ;  and  in  answer, 
as  it  were,  Cavour  and  Lincoln  and  Bismarck  crossed  the 
world's  stage  before  us,  and  joined  the  immortals.  We  saw 
a  dreaming  adventurer,  in  the  name  of  a  legend,  possess 
himself  of  France  and  of  imperial  power.  A  structure  of 
tinsel  was  reared,  and  glittered  in  the  midst  of  an  age  of 
actualities.  Then  all  at  once  came  the  nineteenth  century 
Nemesis,  and,  eclipsing  the  avenging  deity  of  which  we  had 
read  in  our  classics,  drowned  in  blood  and  obliterated  with 
iron  the  shams  and  the  charlatans  who,  our  teacher  had  told 
us,  were  the  essence  and  characteristic  of  the  age. 

And  the  College, — the  Alma  Mater ! — she  who  to-day  has 
placed  me  above  the  rank  of  journeyman, — what  changes  has 
she  witnessed  during  those  years  of  probation  ? — rather  what 
changes  has  she  not  witnessed  !  Of  those — president,  pro- 
fessors, instructors  and  ofificers — connected  with  it  then,  two 
only  remain  ;  but  the  young  bachelor  of  arts  who,  degree  in 
hand,  came  down  the  steps  that  I  was  then  ascending,  has 
for  more  than  half  those  years  presided  over  the  destinies  of 
the  University,  and,  under  the  impulse  of  his  strong  will  and 
receptive  mind,  we  have  seen  the  simple,  traditional  College 
of  the  first  half  of  the  century  develop  into  the  differentiated 
University  of  the  latter  half.  In  1856,  when  I  received  from 
the  University  my  first  diploma,  the  college  numbered  in 
the  aggregate  of  all  its  classes  fewer  students  than  arc  found 


THE    LESSONS   OF    LIFE  5 

in  the  average  single  class  of  to-day.  And  in  the  meanwhile 
what  have  her  alumni  done  for  the  Alma  Mater?  In  1853, 
when  my  apprenticeship  began,  the  accumulated  endowment 
of  the  more  than  two  centuries  which  preceded  amounted  to 
less  than  one  million  of  dollars  ;  the  gifts  and  bequests  of 
the  forty-two  years  covered  by  my  apprenticeship  and  travels 
have  added  to  the  one  million  over  ten  millions.  And  this, 
we  were  taught,  was  the  "  rag-gathering  age  "  of  a  "  trivial, 
jeering,  withered,  unbelieving  "  generation — at  least,  it  gave. 

Thus,  as  I  stand  here  to-day  in  the  high  places  of  the 
University  and  try  to  speak  of  the  lessons  and  the  theories 
of  life  which  my  travels  have  taught  me, — as  I  pause  for  a 
brief  space  by  the  well-remembered  college  steps  which  more 
than  forty  classes  have  since  gone  up  and  descended,  and, 
while  doing  so,  look  back  over  the  long  vista  of  probation, 
my  impulse  is  to  bear  witness  to  the  greatness  and  splendor, 
not  to  the  decadence  and  meanness,  of  the  age  of  which  I 
have  been  a  part.  My  eyes,  too,  have  seen  great  men  ac- 
complishing great  results, — I  have  lived  and  done  journey- 
man work  in  a  time  than  which  none  history  records  have 
been  more  steadfast  and  faithful  in  labor,  more  generous  in 
gift  or  more  fruitful  in  results ;  none  so  beneficent,  none  so 
philanthropic,  none  more  heroic  of  purpose,  none  more 
romantic  in  act. 

More  than  thirty  years  ago,  while  those  cannon  of  Get- 
tysburg were  booming  in  my  ears,  sounding  the  diapason  of 
that  desperate  onslaught  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
there  came  up  in  my  memory  these  lines  from  the  "  Samson 
Aa;onistes  "  : — 

"  All  is  best,  though  we  oft  doubt, 

What  th'  unsearchable  dispose 
C)f  highest  wisdom  brings  about, 

And  ever  best  found  in  the  dose. 
Oft  he  seems  to  hide  his  face, 

But  unexpectedly  returns, 
And  to  his  faithful  champion  will  in  place 

Bear  witness  gloriously." 

These  lines,  I  say,  I  repeated  over  and  over  to  myself, 
somewhat  mechanically  I  suppose,  in  the  dust  and  heat  and 
crash  of  that  July  day.  I  was  young  then  ;  I  am  young  no 
longer.  But,  now  as  then,  those  verses  from  Milton's 
triumphant  choral  chant  bring  to  me,  clad  in  seventeenth- 


6  CHARLES   FRANCIS   ADAMS 

century  words  and  thought,  the  ideas  of  evolution,  contin- 
uity, environment  and  progression,  and,  above  and  beyond 
all,  abiding  faith  in  man  and  in  our  mother  age,  which  are 
the  lamps  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  lit 
whereby  the  steps  of  the  twentieth  century  shall  be  guided. 
[Applause.] 


SIR  EDWIN  ARNOLD 


TIES  OF  KINSHIP  AND  COMMON  SPEECH 

[Speech  of  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  at  the  bancjuet  given  by  the  Lotos  Club, 
New  York,  October  31,  1S91,  as  a  welcome  to  him  on  the  occasion  of  his 
visit  to  America,  after  his  visit  to  the  East.  The  hall  decorations  sym- 
bolized his  membership  in  the  order  of  the  White  Elephant.  Frank  R. 
Lawrence,  President  of  the  Lotos  Club,  in  introducing  tiie  guest  of 
honor,  said  :  "  Splendid  as  are  his  qualities  as  a  poet,  they  do  not 
obscure  his  usefulness  as  a  journalist.  We  remember  and  acknowledge 
bis  services  as  a  moulder  of  public  opinion  in  England,  and  among  his 
many  achievements  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  recall  the  fact  that  it  was  he, 
in  conjunction  with  one  of  our  own  great  American  journalists,  who 
arranged  the  first  visit  of  Stanley  to  Africa  to  perfect  the  discoveries  of 
Iiivingstone."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — In  rising  to  return 
my  sincere  thanks  for  the  high  honor  done  to  me  by  this 
magnificent  banquet,  by  its  lavish  oi:)ulence  of  welcome,  by 
its  goodly  company,  by  the  English  so  far  too  flattering 
which  has  been  employed  by  the  president,  and  by  the 
generous  warmth  by  which  you  have  received  my  name,  I 
should  be  wholly  unable  to  sustain  the  heavy  burden  of  my 
gratitude,  but  for  a  consideration  of  which  I  will  presently 
speak.  To-night  must  always  be  for  me  indeed  a  memo- 
rable occasion. 

Many  a  time  and  oft  during  the  lustrums  composing  my 
life,  I  have  had  personal  reason  to  rejoice  at  the  splendid 
mistake  committed  by  Christopher  Columbus  in  discovering 
your  now  famous  and  powerful  country.  When  his  caravels 
put  forth  from  our  side  of  the  Atlantic,  he  had  no  expec- 
tation whatever,  contrary  to  the  general  belief  and  state- 
ment, of  discovering  a  new  world.  He  was  at  that  time 
thinking  of  and  searching  for  a  very  ancient  land,  the  Empire 

7 


8  SIR   EDWIN    ARNOLD 

of  Xipangu,  or  Japan,  at  that  era  much  and  mysteriously 
talked  about  by  Marco  Polo  and  other  travellers ;  but  by  a 
splendid  blunder  he  tumbled  upon  America.  I  have  good 
reason  to  greet  his  name  in  memory,  apart  from  certain 
other  not  unimportant  results  of  his  error,  owing  as  I  do  to 
him  the  prodigious  debt  of  a  dear  American  wife,  now  with 
God,  of  children,  half-American  and  half- English,  of  count- 
less friends,  of  a  large  part  of  my  literary  reputation,  and, 
to  crown  all,  for  this  memorable  evening,  "  Nox  ccena  que 
Deum,"  which  of  itself  would  be  enough  to  reward  me  for 
more  than  I  have  done,  and  to  encourage  me  in  a  much 
more  arduous  task  than  even  that  which  I  have  under- 
taken. . 

I  am,  to-night,  the  proud  and  happy  guest  of  a  Club  cele- 
brated all  over  the  world  for  its  brilliant  fellowship,  its  broad 
enlightenment,  and  its  large  and  gracious  hospitalities.  I 
see  around  me  here  those  who  worthily  reflect  by  thefr 
weight,  their  learning,  their  social,  civil,  literary  and  artistic 
achievements  and  accomplishments,  the  best  intellect  of  this 
vast  and  noble  land ;  and  I  have  been  pleasantly  made 
aware  that  other  well-known  Americans,  although  absent  in 
person,  are  present  in  spirit  to-night  at  this  board.  Com- 
prehending these  things  as  I  do,  and  by  the  significance 
which  underlies  them,  it  is  a  special  regret  that  I  do  not 
command  any  such  gift  of  easy  speech  as  seems  indigenous 
to  this  country,  for,  truly,  it  appears  to  me  that  almost 
every  cultured  American  gentleman  and  many  that  are  not 
cultured  are  born  powerful  and  persuasive  orators. 

How,  lacking  this,  can  I  hope  to  give  any  adequate  utter- 
ance to  the  gratitude  of  respect,  the  deep  amity,  the  ardent 
good  will  with  which  my  heart  is  laden  ?  An  Arab  proverb 
says  :  "  A  camel  knows  himself  when  he  goes  under  a 
mountain,"  and  if  I  have  sometimes  flattered  myself  that 
much  duty  and  long  habitude  with  the  world  and  its  lead- 
ers had  made  me,  in  some  slight  degree,  master  of  my  na- 
tive tongue,  the  tumult  of  pride  and  pleasure  which  fills  my 
breast  at  this  hour  makes  me  understand  that  I  must  not 
trust  to-night  to  my  unpractised  powers,  but  must  rely 
almost  entirely  on  your  boundless  kindness  and  assured 
indulgence. 

Indeed,  gentlemen,  I  think  I  should  become   at   once  in* 


TIES   OF    KINSHIP   AND   COMMON    SPEECH  Q 

articulate,  and  take  refuge  in  the  safe  retreat  of  silence,  but 
for  that  consideration  of  which  I  spoke  in  the  bej:;inning. 
One  can  never  tell  what  excellent  things  a  man  might  have 
said  who  holds  his  tongue,  and  I  remember  with  what  agree- 
ment I  heard  Mr.  Lowell  at  the  Savage  Club,  in  London, 
remark  that  all  of  his  best  speeches  were  made  in  a  carriage 
going  home  at  night. 

But  I  have  not  the  conceit  to  believe  that  your  splendid 
welcome  of  this  evening  is  intended  solely  for  me  or  for  my 
writings.  In  truth,  although  I  say  this  in  a  certain  confi- 
dence and  do  not  wish  the  observation  to  go  far  beyond  this 
banquet  chamber,  I  have  no  high  opinion  of  myself.  The 
true  artist  can  never  lose  sight  of  the  abyss  which  separates 
his  ideal  from  that  which  he  has  realized ;  the  thing  he 
sought  and  strove  to  do,  from  the  actual  poem  or  picture  he 
has  accomplished.  But  I  am  confidently  and  joyously 
aware,  that  in  my  comparatively  unimportant  person  you 
salute  to-night,  with  the  large-hcartedness  characteristic  of 
your  land,  and  of  the  Lotus  Club  in  particular,  the  heart  of 
that  other  and  older  England  which  also  loves  you  well, 
and  through  me  to-night  warmly  and  sincerely  greets  you. 

Moreover,  the  lowliest  ambassador  derives  a  measure  of 
dignity  from  the  commission  of  a  mighty  sovereign,  and  the 
conviction  that  supports  me  this  evening  is  that,  in  my  un- 
worthy self,  the  men  of  letters  of  the  cis-atlantic  and  trans- 
altantic  lands  are  here  joining  hands,  and  that,  if  I  may  in 
humility  speak  for  my  literary  countrymen,  they  also  are  here, 
and  now  warmly  salute  those  of  your  race.  Not  the  less 
warmly,  because  America  has  decreed  a  signal  deed  of 
justice  toward  English  authors  in  her  copyright  act.  Some 
years  ago  I  wrote  two  little  verses  in  a  preface  of  a  book, 
dedicated  to  my  numerous  friends  in  America,  which  ran 
like  this : — 

"Thou  new  Great  Britain,  famous,  free  and  bright, 
West  of  the  West,  sleepeth  my  ancient  East ; 
Our  sunsets  make  thy  noons,  day  time  and  night 
Meet  in  sweet  mornmg  promise  on  thy  breast. 
Fulfil  the  promise,  lady  of  wide  lands, 
Where  with  thine  own  an  English  singer  ranks; 
I  who  found  favor  from  thy  sovereign  hands, 
Kissed  them,  and  at  thy  feet  lay  this  for  thanks." 

[Applause] 


10  SIR    EDWIN    ARNOLD 

Your  Legislature  has  since  rendered  my  statement 
absolutely  true,  and  has  given  full  citizenship  in  this 
country  to  every  English  author.  Personally  I  was  never 
a  fanatic  on  the  matter.  I  have  always  rather  had  a  tender- 
ness for  those  buccaneers  of  the  ocean  of  books  who,  in 
nefarious  bottoms,  carried  my  poetical  goods  far  and  wide, 
without  any  charge  for  freight.  Laurels,  in  my  opinion, 
fortheycan  be  won,  are  meant  to  be  worn  with  thankfulness 
and  modesty,  not  to  be  eaten  like  salad  or  boiled  like 
cabbage  for  the  pot,  and  when  some  of  my  comrades  have 
said  impatiently,  about  their  more  thoughtful  works,  that 
writers  must  live,  I  have  perhaps,  vexed  them  by  replying 
that  an  author,  who  aspires  to  fame  and  an  independent 
gratitude  bestowed  for  the  true  creative  service  to  man- 
kind, should  be  content  with  those  lofty  and  inestimable  re- 
wards, and  not  demand  bread  and  butter  also  from  the  high 
Muses,  as  if  they  were  German  waitresses  in  a  coffee-house. 
[Laughter.] 

Other  ways  of  earning  daily  bread  should  be  followed. 
If  profit  comes,  of  course  it  is  to  men,  poets  and  authors 
welcome  enough,  and  justice  is  ever  the  best  of  all  ex- 
cellent things,  but  the  one  priceless  reward  for  a  true  poet, 
or  sincere  thinker,  lives  surely  in  the  service  his  work  has 
done  to  his  generation,  and  in  the  precious  friendships 
which  even  I  have  found  enrich  his  existence  and  embellish 
his  path  in  life.  But  this  excursion  on  the  literary  rights, 
now  equitably  established,  leads  me  to  touch  upon  the  noble 
community  of  language   which  our  two    countries  possess. 

I  am  not  what  Canning  describes  as  the  friend  of  every 
country  but  his  own.  Rather,  in  the  best  and  worst  sense 
of  the  word,  I  am  a  darned  Britisher  who  rejoices  to  think 
that  her  Majesty  is  sovereign,  is  the  best  and  noblest  of  all 
noble  ladies,  and  that  "  the  Queen's  morning  drum  beats 
around  the  world  ;"  but  it  was  an  American  who  first  uttered 
that  fine  phrase,*  and  your  greatness  also  marches  to  the 
glorious  reveille.  You,  too,  besides  your  own  ample  glories, 
have  a  large  part  by  kinship  and  common  speech  in  the 
work  which  England  has  done  and  is  doing  in  Asia,  by 
giving  peace  and  development  to  India;  in  Africa,  by 
fostering   and  preserving  order;    in  Egypt,  by   opening  the 

*  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  probably  quoted  Daniel  Webster  from  memory. 


TIES    OF    KINSHIP    AXD    COMMON    SPEECH  II 

Dark  Continent ;  as  well  as  peopling  Australia  and  many  a 
distant  colony  with  her  industrious  children.  Half  of  all 
this  I  consider  is  America's,  as  she  may  also  claim  a  large 
and  substantial  part  in  the  spread  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
through  this  vast  new  world,  under  that  lovely  and  honored 
banner  of  which  I  must  think  our  old  poet  was  dreaming, 
when  he  sang  : — 

"  Ifer  lightness  and  brightness  do  shine  in  such  spendor, 
That  none  but  the  stars  are  thought  fit  to  attend  her." 

Beyond  all, I  say,we  share  together  that  glorious  language 
of  Shakespeare,  which  it  will  be  our  common  duty,  and  I 
think  our  manifest  destiny,  to  establish  as  a  general  tongue 
of  the  globe.  This  seems  to  be  inevitable,  not  without  a 
certain  philological  regret,  since,  if  I  were  to  choose  an  old 
tongue,  I  think  I  would  prefer,  for  its  music  and  its  majesty, 
the  beautiful  Castilian.  Nevertheless,  the  whole  world 
must  eventually  talk  our  speech,  which  is  already  so  prev- 
alent, that  to  circumnavigate  the  globe  no  other  is  neces- 
sary. And  even  in  the  by-streets  of  Japan,  the  bazars  of 
India  and  China,  and  the  villages  of  Malaya,  one-half  of 
their  shops  write  up  the  name  and  goods  in  English.  Is 
not  this  alone  well-nigh  enough  to  link  us  in  pride  and 
peace?     The  English  poet  Cowper  has  nobly  written  : — 

"  Time  was  when  it  was  praise  and  boast  enough, 
In  every  clime,  travel  where'er  we  might, 
That  we  were  born  her  children  ;   fame  enough 
To  fill  the  mission  of  a  common  man, 
That  Chatham's  language  was  his  native  tongue." 

Let  US  all  try  to  keep  in  speech  and  in  writing  as  close 
as  we  can  to  the  pure  English  that  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  and  in  these  later  times  Longfellow,  Emerson 
and  Hawthorne,  have  fixed.  [Applause.]  It  will  not  be 
easy.  When  I  was  conversing  recently  with  Lord  Tenny- 
son, and  expressing  similar  opinions,  he  said  to  me  :  "  It  is 
bad  for  us  that  English  will  always  be  a  spoken  speech,  since 
that  means  that  it  will  always  be  changing,  and  so  the  time 
will  come  when  you  and  I  will  be  as  hard  to  read  for  the 
common  people  as  Chaucer  is  to-day."  You  remember  what 
opinion  your  brilliant  humorist,  Artemus  Ward,  let  fall 
concerning  that  ancient  singer.   "  Mr.  Chaucer,"  he  observed 


12  SIR    EDWIN    ARNOLD 

casually,  "  is  an  admirable  poet,  but  as  a  spellist,  a  very 
decided  failure."     [Laughter.] 

To  the  treasure  house  of  that  noble  tongue  the  United 
States  has  splendidly  contributed.  It  would  be  far  poorer 
to-day  without  the  tender  lines  of  Longfellow,  the  serene 
and  philosophic  pages  of  Emerson,  the  convincing  wit  and 
clear  criticism  of  my  illustrious  departed  friend,  James  Rus- 
sell Lowell,  the  Catullus-like  perfection  of  the  lyrics  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  and  the  glorious,  large-tempered  dithyrambs  of 
Walt   Whitman.     [Applause.] 

These  stately  and  sacred  laurel  groves  grow  here  in  a 
garden  forever  extending,  ever  carrying  further  forward,  for 
the  sake  of  humanity,  the  irresistible  flag  of  our  Saxon 
supremacy,  leading  one  to  falter  in  an  attempt  to  eulogize 
America,  and  the  idea  of  her  potency  and  her  promise. 
The  most  elaborate  panegyric  would  seem  but  a  weak  im- 
pertinence which  would  remind  you,  perhaps  too  vividly,  of 
Sidney  Smith,  who,  when  he  saw  his  grandchild  pat  the 
back  of  a  large  turtle,  asked  her  why  she  did  so.  The  little 
maid  replied  :     "Grandpapa,  I  do  it  to  please  the  turtle." 

"  My  child,"  he  answered,  "you  might  as  well  stroke  the 
dome  of  St.  Paul's  to  please  the  Dean  and  chapter." 
[Laughter.]  I  myself  once  heard,  in  our  Zoological  gardens 
in  London,  another  little  girl  ask  her  mamma  whether  it 
would  hurt  the  elephant  if  she  offered  him  a  chocolate 
drop.  In  that  guarded  and  respectful  spirit  it  is  that  I 
venture  to  tell  you  here  to-night  how  truly  in  England  the 
peace  and  prosperity  of  your  republic  is  desired,  and  that 
nothing  except  good  will  is  felt  by  the  mass  of  our  people 
toward  you,  and  nothing  but  the  greatest  satisfaction  in 
your  wealth  and  progress.       [Prolonged  applause.] 

Between  these  two  majestic  sisters  of  the  Saxon  blood 
the  hatchet  of  war  is,  please  God,  buried.  No  cause  of 
quarrel,  I  think  and  hope,  can  ever  be  otherwise  than  truly 
out  of  proportion  to  the  vaster  causes  of  affection  and  ac- 
cord. We  have  no  longer  to  prove  to  each  other,  or  to  the 
world,  that  Englishmen  and  Americans  are  high-spirited  and 
fearless ;  that  Englishmen  and  Americans  alike  will  do 
justice,  and  will  have  justice,  and  will  put  up  with  nothing 
else  from  each  other  and  from  the  nations  at  large.  [En- 
thusiastic applause.]     Our  proofs  are    made  on  both  sides, 


TIES   OF    KINSHIP   AND   COMMON    SPEECH  13 

and  indelibly  written  on  the  page  of  history.  Not  that  I 
wish  to  speak  platitudes  about  war.  It  has  been  necessary 
to  human  progress;  it  has  bred  and  preserved  noble  virtues; 
it  has  been  inevitable,  and  may  be  again  ;  but  it  belongs 
to  a  low  civilization.  Other  countries  have,  perhaps,  not 
yet  reached  that  point  of  intimate  contact  and  rational  ad- 
vance, but  for  us  two,  at  least,  the  time  seems  to  have  come 
when  violent  decisions,  and  even  talk  of  them,  should  be  as 
much  abolished  between  us  as  cannibalism. 

I  ventured,  when  in  Washington,  to  propose  to  President 
Harrison  that  we  should  some  day,  the  sooner  the  better, 
choose  five  men  of  public  worth  in  the  United  States,  and 
five  in  England  ;  give  them  gold  coats  if  you  please,  and  a 
handsome  salary,  and  establish  them  as  a  standing  and 
supreme  tribunal  of  arbitration,  referring  to  them  the  little 
family  fallings-out  of  America  and  of  England,  whenever 
something  goes  wrong  between  us  about  a  sealskin  in 
Behring  Strait,  a  lobster  pot,  an  ambassador's  letter,  a 
border  tariff,  or  an  Irish  vote.  He  showed  himself  very  well 
disposed  toward  my  suggestion.     [Laughter.] 

Mr.  President,  in  the  sacred  hope  that  you  take  me  to  be 
a  better  poet  than  orator,  I  thank  you  all  from  the  bottom 
of  my  heart  for  your  reception  to-night,  and  personally  pray 
for  the  tranquillity  and  prosperity  of  this  free  and  magnifi- 
cent republic. 

Under  the  circumstances,  one  word  may  perhaps  be  per- 
mitted, before  a  company  so  intellectual  and  representative, 
as  to  my  purpose  in  visiting  your  States.  I  had  the  inclina- 
tion to  try  this  literary  experiment,  whether  a  poet  might 
not,  with  a  certain  degree  of  success,  himself  read  the  poems 
which  he  had  composed  and  best  understands,  as  the  pro- 
mulgator of  his  own  ideas.  The  boldness  of  such  an  enter- 
prise really  covers  a  sincere  compliment  to  America,  for 
that  which  was  possible  and  even  popular  in  ancient  Greece 
could  be  nowhere  again  possible  if  not  in  America,  which 
has  many  great  characteristics,  and  where  the  audiences  are 
so  patient,  generous  and  enlightened.  We  shall  see. 
Heartily,  gratefully,  and  with  a  mind  from  which  the 
memory  of  this  glorious  evening  will  never  be  effaced,  I 
thank  you  for  the  very  friendly  and  favorable  omens  of  this 
banquet.      [Applause.] 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD 


THE  REALM  OF  LITERATURE 

[Speech  delivered  by  Matthew  Arnold  in  response  to  the  toast,  "The 
Interests  of  Literature,"  at  the  annual  banquet  of  the  Royal  Academy, 
London,  May  i,  1S75.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen:  —  Literature,  no 
doubt,  is  a  great  and  splendid  art,  allied  to  that  great  and 
splendid  art  of  which  we  see  around  us  the  handiwork. 
But,  sir,  you  do  me  an  undeserved  honor  when,  as  Presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Academy,  you  desire  me  to  speak  in  the 
name  of  Literature.  Whatever  I  may  have  once  wished  or 
intended,  my  life  is  not  that  of  a  man  of  letters,  but  of  an 
Inspector  of  Schools  [laughter],  and  it  is  with  embarrass- 
ment that  I  now  stand  up  in  the  dread  presence  of  my  own 
ofKicial  chiefs  who  have  lately  been  turning  on  their  Inspec- 
tor an  eye  of  suspicion.     [Laughter.] 

Therefore,  sir,  I  cannot  quite  with  propriety  speak  here 
as  a  literary  man  and  as  a  brother  artist ;  but,  since  you 
have  called  upon  me,  let  me  at  least  quote  to  you,  and  ap- 
ply for  my  own  benefit  and  that  of  others,  something  from 
a  historian  of  literature.  Fauriel,  the  French  literary  his- 
torian, tells  us  of  a  company  of  Greeks  settled  somewhere 
in  southern  Italy,  who  retained  for  an  extraordinary  length 
of  time  their  Greek  language  and  civilization.  However, 
time  and  circumstances  were  at  last  too  strong  for  them  ; 
they  began  to  lose,  they  felt  themselves  losing,  their  dis- 
tinctive Greek  character  ;  they  grew  like  all  the  other  peo- 
ple about  them.  Only,  once  every  year  they  assembled 
themselves  together  at  a  public  festival  of  their  com- 
munity, and  there,  in  language  which  the  inroads  of 
barbarism   were    every     year     more    and     more    debasing, 

14 


thp:  realm  oi''  utkrature  15 

they  reminded  one   another   that   they  were  once   Greeks 
[Cheers  and  laughter.] 

How  many  of  your  guests  to-night,  sir,  may  remind  one 
another  of  the  same  thing!  The  brilliant  statesman  at  the 
head  of  Her  Majesty's  government  [Gladstone],  to  whom 
we  shall  listen  with  so  much  admiration,  by  and  by,  may 
even  boast  that  he  was  born  in  Arcadia. 

To  no  people,  probably,  does  it  so  often  happen  to  have 
to  break  in  great  measure  with  their  vocation  and  with  the 
Muses  as  to  the  men  of  letters  for  whom  you  have  sum- 
moned mc  to  speak,  ]5ut  perhaps  there  is  no  one  man 
here,  however  positive  and  prosaic,  who  has  not,  at  some 
time  or  other  of  his  life,  and  in  some  form  or  other,  felt 
something  of  that  desire  for  the  truth  and  beauty  of  things 
which  makes  the  Greek  and  the  artist.  The  year  goes 
around  for  us  amid  other  preoccupations  ;  then  with  the 
spring  arrives  your  hour.  You  collect  us  at  this  festival  ;  you 
surround  us  with  enchantment,  and  call  upon  us  to  remem- 
ber, and,  in  our  stammering  and  imperfect  language,  to  con- 
fess that  we  were  once  Greeks.  If  we  have  not  forgotten  it, 
the  reminder  is  delightful  ;  if  we  have  forgotten  it,  it  is 
salutary,     [Cheers.] 

In  the  common  and  practical  life  of  this  country,  in  its 
government,  politics,  commerce,  lav/,  medicine — even  in  its 
religion — some  compliance  with  men's  conventionalit)^  vul- 
garity, folly,  and  ignobleness,  and  a  certain  dose  of  clap- 
trap, passes  also  for  a  thing  of  necessity.  Ikit  in  that 
world  to  which  we  have  sometimes  aspired,  in  your  world 
of  art,  sir,  in  the  Greek  world — for  so  I  will  call  it  after  the 
wonderful  people  who  introduced  mankind  to  it — in  the 
Greek  world  of  art  and  science,  clap-trap  and  compliance 
with  the  conventional  are  simply  fatal.  Let  us  be  grateful 
to  you  for  recalling  it  to  us  ;  for  reminding  us  that  strength 
and  success  are  possible  to  find  by  taking  one's  law,  not 
from  the  form  and  pressure  of  the  passing  day,  but  from 
the  living  forces  of  our  genuine  nature,  [Cheers.] 
Vivi^ur  ingcnio  ;  ccicra  mortis  criint. 


SIR   ROBERT   BALL 


KINSHIP  OF  ART  AND  SCIENCE 

[Speech  delivered  by  Sir  Robert  Ball  at  the  annual  banquet  of  the   Royal 
Academy,  London,  May  5,  1894.] 

Gentlemen  : — I  rise  to  respond  to  the  toast  of  "  Science," 
with  which  you  have  been  so  kind  as  to  associate  my  name. 
The  particular  branch  with  which  I  am  concerned  covers 
only  a  small  part  of  the  vast  extent  of  Science ;  but  I  would 
venture  to  mention  a  circumstance  which  may  justify  me 
perhaps  in  taking  a  rather  wider  view  of  it.  Among  the 
guests  at  a  house  where  I  once  was  staying  was  a  certain 
illustrious  professor  from  the  Continent.  He  did  not  know 
many  of  the  people  in  the  house.  I  had  occasion  to  go  out 
to  a  little  gathering  of  the  Royal  Zoological  Society.  During 
the  week  I  saw  that  he  did  not  take  in,  quite,  who  all  the 
people  were,  but  just  at  the  end  of  the  week  he  said  to  me, 
"  Oh,  you  are  the  astronomer.  I  thought  you  were  the  wild- 
beast  man."     [Laughter.] 

The  speakers,  who  have  preceded  me,  have  drawn  inspi- 
ration from  the  pictures  that  they  find  around  them  on  the 
walls  of  this  beautiful  chamber.  Unfortunately,  the  subjects 
in  which  astronomers  are  concerned  do  not  lend  themselves 
to  artistic  portraiture.  Distance  may  lend  enchantment  to 
the  view,  but  then  that  distance  should  be  of  moderate 
dimensions — it  should  not  exceed  a  few  millions  of  miles. 
[Laughter.]  But,  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  say  a  few  words 
for  another  branch  of  Science,  with  which  I  am  not  im- 
mediately connected,  I  would  like  to  remark  on  the  striking 
pictures  of  wild  animals  which  decorate  this  room — in  "  Or- 
pheus," and  in  that  noble  picture  of  the  lion,  "  Come  on  if 
you  Dare !  "     It  appears  to  me  that  the  paintings  of  these 

16 


KINSHIP   OF   ART   AND    SCIENCE  1 7 

animals,  fcne  nafiine,  possess  an  importance  whicii  \vc 
perhaps  do  not  always  appreciate,  for  it  must  be  observed — 
and  it  is  one  of  the  saddest  facts  to  every  lover  of  nature — 
that  these  types  of  wild  animals  are  disappearing^  with  most 
frightful  rapidity.  Many  of  them  are  already  extinct,  others 
are  daily  becoming  so,  and,  consequently,  within  a  generation 
or  two  at  the  most,  these  numerous  and  beautiful  races  which 
adorn  the  earth  will  have,  in  a  great  measure,  disappeared, 
and  all  that  our  descendants  will  know  of  them  will  be  re- 
presented by  the  crumbling  skeletons  in  our  museums,  or 
the  moldy  skins  which  caricature  the  beautiful  creatures 
that  still  exist.  Think,  then,  how  great  will  be  the  value 
that  will  attach  to  these  beautiful  pictures,  in  which  the 
skill  and  feeling  of  the  artist  will  have  depicted,  for  the  ad- 
miration of  posterity,  animals  no  longer  existing.  ["Hear! 
Hear  !  "]  Think  how  we  prize  now  the  few  pictures  that 
remain  of  the  dodo,  or  even  those  rude  etchings  which  the 
Cave  man  inscribed  with  a  flint  on  a  bone,  representing  the 
outlines  of  the  mammoth. 

This  is  the  point  of  view  from  which  Science  regards  the 
importance  of  such  pictures  as  those  to  which  I  have  referred. 
But  there  is  a  portrait  on  these  walls  which  reminds  me  of 
another  branch  of  my  subject.  We  have  there  a  beautiful 
painting  of  Professor  Dewar,  destined  for  the  walls  of  Peter 
House  College,  whose  fame  will  be  associated  with  those 
splendid  researches  with  which  Professor  Dewar  is  connected, 
and  which  have  added  additional  renown  to  the  Royal  In- 
stitution of  Great  Britain.  ["  Hear  !  Hear  !  "]  On  behalf, 
then,  of  the  various  departments  of  Science,  I  return  you 
my  hearty  thanks  for  this  toast,  which  you,  sir,  have  so 
kindly  proposed,  and  which  has  been  so  cordially  honored 
by  your  illustrious  guests.     [Cheers.] 


GEORGE    BANCROFT 


TRIBUTE  TO  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 

[Speech  delivered  by  George  Bancroft,  President  of  the  Century  As- 
sociation, New  York,  November  5,  1864,  on  the  occasion  of  its  celebration  of 
the  seventieth  birthday  of  William  Cullen  Bryant,  one  of  its  founders  and 
trustees.] 

Mr.  Bryant  : — The  Century  has  set  apart  this  evening  to 
show  you  honor.  All  its  members,  the  old  and  the  young, 
crowd  around  you  like  brothers  around  a  brother,  like 
children  around  a  father.  Our  wives  and  daughters  have 
come  with  us,  that  they,  too,  may  join  in  the  pleasant  office 
of  bearing  witness  to  your  worth.  The  artists  of  our 
Association,  whose  labors  you  have  ever  been  ready  to 
cheer,  whose  merits  you  have  loved  to  proclaim,  unite  to 
bring  an  enduring  memorial  to  your  excellence  in  an  art  near 
akin  to  their  own.  The  noble  band  of  your  compeers,  in 
your  own  high  calling,  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  offer 
their  salutations  and  praise  and  good  wishes,  and  a  full 
chorus  of  respect  and  affection.  Others  who  could  not 
accept  our  invitation  keep  the  festival  by  themselves,  and 
are  now  in  their  own  homes,  going  over  the  years  which 
you  have  done  so  much  to  gladden. 

It  is  primarily  your  career  as  a  poet  that  we  celebrate. 
The  moment  is  well  chosen.  While  the  mountains  and  the 
ocean-side  ring  with  the  tramp  of  cavalry  and  the  din 
of  cannon,  and  the  nation  is  in  its  agony,  and  an  earthquake 
sweeps  through  the  land,  we  take  arespite  to  escape  into  the 
serene  region  of  ideal  pursuits  which  can  never  fail. 

It  has  been  thought  praise  enough  of  another  to  say  that 
he  "wrote  no  line  which  dying  he  could  wish  to  blot." 
Every  line  that  you  have  written   may  be  remembered  by 

18 


TRIBUTE    TO   WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT  IQ 

yourself  and  by  others  at  all  times,  for  your  genius  has 
listened  only  to  the  whisperings  of  the  beautiful  and  the 
pure. 

Moreover,  a  warm  nationality  runs  through  all  your 
verse  ;  your  imagination  took  the  hue  of  the  youth  of  our 
country  and  has  reflected  its  calm,  contemplative  moods 
when  the  pulses  of  its  early  life  beat  vigorously  but  smoothl)', 
and  no  bad  passions  had  distorted  its  countenance.  The 
clashing  whirlwinds  of  civil  war,  the  sublime  energy  and 
perseverance  of  the  people, the  mart}M-dom  of  myriads  of  its 
bravest  and  best,  its  new  birth  through  terrible  sufferings, 
will  give  a  more  passionate  and  tragic  and  varied  cast  to  the 
literature  of  the  coming  generations.  A  thousand  years 
hence  posterity  will  turn  to  your  pages  as  those  which 
best  mirror  the  lovely  earnestness  of  the  rising  Republic, 
the  sweet  moments  of  her  years  of  innocence,  when  she  was 
all  unfamiliar  with  sorrow,  bright  with  the  halo  of  promise, 
seizing  the  great  solitudes  by  the  busy  hosts  of  civilization, 
and  guiding  the  nations  of  the  earth  into  the  pleasant  paths 
of  freedom  and  of  peace. 

You  have  derived  your  inspiration  as  a  poet  from  your  love 
of  Nature,  and  she  has  returned  your  affection,  and  blessed 
you  as  her  favored  son.  At  threescore  and  ten  years,  your 
eye  is  undimmed,  your  step  light  and  free,  as  in  youth, 
and  the  lyre,  which  ever  responded  so  willingly  to  your 
touch,  refuses  to  leave  your  hand. 

Our  tribute  to  you  is  to  the  poet ;  but  we  should  not  have 
paid  it,  had  we  not  revered  you  as  a  man.  Your  blameless 
life  is  a  continuous  record  of  patriotism  and  integrity ;  and, 
passing  untouched  through  the  fiery  conflicts  that  grow  out 
of  the  ambition  of  others,  you  have,  as  all  agree,  preserved  a 
perfect  consistency  with  yourself,  and  an  unswerving  and 
unselfish  fidelity  to  your  convictions. 

This  is  high  praise,  but  the  period  at  which  we  address  you 
removes  even  the  suspicion  of  flattery,  for  it  is  your  entrance 
upon  your  seventieth  year.  It  is  a  solemn  thing  to  draw 
nearer  and  nearer  to  eternity.  You  teach  us  how  to  meet 
old  age;  with  each  year  you  become  more  and  more  genial, 
and  cherish  larger  and  still  larger  sympathies  with  your 
fellow-men,  and  if  Time  has  set  on  you  any  mark,  you 
preserve  in  all  its  freshness  the  youth  of  the  soul. 


20  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

What  remains  but  to  wish  you  a  long-continued  life, 
crowned  with  health  and  prosperity,  with  happiness  and 
honor?  Live  on  till  you  hear  your  children's  children  rise 
up  and  call  you  blessed.  Live  on  for  the  sake  of  us,  your 
old  associates,  for  whom  life  would  lose  much  of  its  luster 
in  losing  you  as  a  companion  and  friend.  Live  on  for  your 
own  sake,  that  you  may  enjoy  the  better  day  of  which  your 
eye  already  catches  the  dawn.  Where  faith  discerned  the 
Saviour  of  the  world,  the  unbeliever  looked  only  on  a  man 
of  sorrows,  crowned  with  thorns,  and  tottering  under  the 
burden  of  the  cross  on  which  He  was  to  die.  The  social 
sceptic  sees  America  sitting  apart  in  her  affliction,  stung  by 
vipers  at  her  bosom,  and  welcomed  to  the  pit  by  "  earth's 
ancient  kings  ;  "  but  through  all  the  anguish  of  her  grief,  you 
teach  us  to  behold  her  in  immortal  beauty,  as  she  steps 
onward  through  trials  to  brighter  glory.  Live  to  enjoy 
her  coming  triumph,  when  the  acknowledged  power  of  right 
shall  tear  the  root  of  sorrow  out  of  the  heart  of  the  country, 
and  make  her  more  than  ever  the  guardian  of  human  liberty 
and  the  regenerator  of  the  race.     [Applause.] 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD 
{BENJAMIN  DISRAELI) 

Photogravure  after  a  photograph  from  life 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 

(BENJAMIN  DISRAELI) 


PEACE  WITH  HONOR 

[A  magnificent  banquet  was  given  in  London,  July  27,  1S7S,  to  the 
Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  and  the  Marquis  of  vSalisbury,  by  a  numerous  body 
of  the  Conservative  Peers  and  Members  of  the  House  of  Commons  to 
testify  their  high  appreciation  and  approval  of  the  distinguished  services 
of  Her  Majesty's  Plenipotentiaries  at  the  Congress  of  Berlin,  which 
closed  July  13,  1878.  The  large  hall  was  decorated  with  flags,  banners, 
and  Conservative  mottoes,  conspicuous  among  which  was  "  Peace  with 
Honor."  The  chairman,  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  in  introducing  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  said  :  "We  have  met  here  to  welcome  home,  after  arduous 
and  difficult  duties,  two  noble  lords,  though  on  this  occasion  I  shall  refer 
only  to  one  who  holds  the  position  of  Prime  Minister  of  this  country. 
[Much  cheering.]  It  is  not  for  me  on  this  occasion  to  enter  upon  the 
career  of  that  noble  lord,  for  it  is  well  known  as  a  matter  of  history. 
His  career  and  his  political  character  have  been  before  us  for  upwards  of 
forty  years.  He  has  had  one  great  advantage — I  will  not  say  at  the  end 
of  his  career,  for  that  I  hope  is  still  far  distant.  But  his  career,  like  that 
of  all  statesmen  in  this  country,  has  been  and  could  not  be  otherwise 
than  a  chequered  one,  sometimes  defeat,  oftentimes  victory  ;  and  now  at 
last  I  hope  he  has  achieved  the  greatest  victory  of  his  life.  [Cheers.] 
He  went  out  with  an  apprehension  on  the  part  of  many,  and  with  the 
declaration  of  others,  that  he  was  going  to  produce  war  ;  but  he  has 
returned  crowned  with  peace.  [Loud  cheers.]  Notwithstanding  the 
difficult  and  arduous  position  in  which  he  has  been  placed,  assailed  at 
home  as  well  as  abroad,  but  at  the  same  time  well  supported  at  home 
[cheers],  his  motives  and  intentions  well  understood  [cheers],  we  have 
not  at  any  time  lost  confidence  in  him.  .  .  .  He  has  been  able  in  the 
great  council  of  nations  to  speak  openly  and  clearly,  with  no  uncertain 
sound,  producing  the  happy  result  which  we  now  celebrate.  A  generous 
foe  is  as  welcome  as  the  constant  friend.  No  one  can  appreciate  as  I  do 
a  noble,  open,  generous  foe.  We  meet  in  the  field  ;  let  us  have  a  fair 
fight,  and  he  who  conquers,  wins.  [Cheers.]  So  it  has  been  with  my 
noble  friend.  He  has  had  many  a  hard  battle  to  fight,  but  on  this  oc- 
casion he  has  fought  with  success,  carrying  with  him,  I  believe,  the  feel- 
ing of  the  whole  country.  I  propose  now  '  The  Health  of  Lord  Bea- 
consfield,' and  welcome  home  to  him  ;  welcome  to  him  as  the  greatest 
conqueror,  who  has  vanquished  war  and  brought  us  back  to  peace."] 

21 


22  LORD    BEACONSFIELD 

My  Lord  Duke  and  Gentlemen  : — I  am  sure  you 
will  acquit  me  of  affectation  if  I  say  that  it  is  not  without 
emotion  that  I  have  received  this  expression  of  your  good- 
will and  sympathy.  [Cheers.]  When  I  look  round  this 
chamber  I  see  the  faces  of  some  who  entered  public  life  with 
myself,  as  my  noble  friend  the  noble  Duke  has  reminded  me, 
more  than  forty  years  ago  ;  I  see  more  whose  entrance  into 
public  life  I  witnessed  when  1  had  myself  gained  some  ex- 
perience of  it ;  and  lastly  I  see  those  who  have  only  recently 
entered  upon  public  life,  and  whom  it  has  been  my  duty  and 
my  delight  to  encourage  and  counsel  [cheers]  when  they 
entered  that  public  career  so  characteristic  of  this  country, 
and  which  is  one  of  the  main  securities  of  our  liberty  and 
welfare.     [Cheers.] 

My  lords  and  gentlemen,  our  chairman  has  referred  to  my 
career,  like  that  of  all  public  men  in  this  country,  as  one  of 
change  and  vicissitude ;  but  I  have  been  sustained  even  in 
the  darkest  hours  of  our  party  by  the  conviction  that  I  pos- 
sessed your  confidence.  [Cheers.]  I  will  say  your  indulgent 
confidence  ;  for  in  the  long  course  of  my  public  life  that  I 
may  have  committed  many  mistakes  is  too  obvious  a  truth 
to  touch  upon ;  but  that  you  have  been  indulgent  there  is 
no  doubt,  for  I  can,  I  hope  I  may  say,  proudly  remember 
that  it  has  been  my  lot  to  lead  in  either  House  of  Parliament 
this  great  party  for  a  longer  period  than  has  ever  fallen  to 
the  lot  of  any  public  man  in  the  history  of  this  country. 
[Cheers.]  That  I  have  owed  this  result  to  your  generous 
indulgence  more  than  to  any  personal  qualities  of  my  own 
[cheers  and  cries  of  "  No  !  no  !  "]  no  man  is  more  sensible 
than  myself ;  but  it  is  a  fact  that  I  may  recur  to  with  some 
degree  of  proud  satisfaction.      [Cheers.] 

Our  noble  chairman  has  referred  to  the  particular  occasion 
which  has  made  me  your  guest  to-day.  I  attended  that 
high  assembly  which  has  recently  dispersed,  with  much  re- 
luctance. I  yielded  to  the  earnest  solicitations  of  my  noble 
friend  near  me  [the  Marquis  of  Salisbury],  my  colleague 
in  that  great  enterprise.  [Cheers.]  He  thought  that  my 
presence  might  be  of  use  to  him  in  the  vast  difficulties  he 
had  to  encounter  [cheers]  ;  but  I  must  say  now,  as  I  shall 
ever  say,  that  to  his  lot  fell  the  laboring  oar  in  that  great 
work  [cheers]  and  that  you  are,  I  will  not  say  equally,  but 


PEACE    WITH    HOXOR  23 

more  indebted  to  him  than  to  myself  for  the  satisfactory 
result  which  you  kindly  reco<^ni/,e.      [Cheers.] 

I  share  the  conviction  of  our  noble  chairman  that  it  is  one 
which  has  been  received  with  satisfaction  by  the  country 
[loud  cheers],  but  I  am  perfectly  aware  that  that  satisfaction 
is  not  complete  or  unanimous,  because  I  know  well  that 
before  ei<^ht  and  forty  hours  have  passed  the  marshaled  hosts 
of  opposition  will  be  prepared  to  challenLrc  what  has  been 
done  and  to  question  the  policy  we  hope  we  have  estab- 
lished.    [Cheers.] 

My  lords  and  gentlemen,  as  I  can  no  longer  raise  my  voice 
in  that  House  of  Parliament  where  this  contest  is  to  take 
place,  as  I  sit  now  in  a  House  where  our  opponents  never 
unsheathe  their  swords  [cheers  and  laughter],  a  House 
where,  although  the  two  chief  plenipotentiariesof  the  Queen 
sit,  they  are  met  only  by  innuendo  and  by  question  [cheers], 
I  hope  you  will  permit  me,  though  with  extreme  brevity,  to 
touch  on  one  or  two  of  the  points  which  in  a  few  hours  may 
much  engage  the  interest  and  attention  of  Parliament. 
[Cheers.] 

My  lords  and  gentlemen,  it  is  dif^cult  to  describe  the 
exact  meaning  of  the  charge  which  is  brought  against  the 
plenipotentiaries  of  the  Queen,  as  it  will  be  introduced  to  the 
House  of  Commons  on  Monday.  Drawn  as  it  is,  it  appears 
at  first  sight  to  be  only  a  series  of  congratulatory  regrets. 
[Much  cheering.]  But,  my  lords  and  gentlemen,  if  ^'ou 
penetrate  the  meaning  of  this  movement,  it  would  appear 
that  there  are  two  points  in  which  it  is  hoped  that  a  success- 
ful onset  may  be  made  on  Her  Majesty's  Government,  and 
on  those  two  points,  and  those  alone,  I  hope  with  becoming 
brevity,  at  this  moment,  perhaps,  you  will  allow  me  to  make 
one  or  two  remarks.     [Cheers.] 

It  is  charged  against  Her  Majesty's  Government  that  they 
have  particularly  deceived  and  deserted  Greece.  Now,  my 
lords  and  gentlemen,  this  is  a  subject  which  is,  I  think,  capable 
of  simpler  treatment  than  hitherto  it  has  encountered  in 
public  discussion.  We  have  given  at  all  times,  in  public 
and  in  private,  to  the  Government  of  Greece  and  to  all  who 
might  influence  its  decisions  but  one  advice — that  on  no 
account  should  they  be  induced  to  interfere  in  those  coming 
disturbances  which  two  years  ago  threatened  Europe,  and 


24  LORD    BEACONSFIELD 

which  concluded  in  a  devastating  war.  And  we  gave  that 
advice  on  these  grounds,  which  appear  to  me  incontestable. 
If,  as  Greece  supposed,  and  as  we  thought  erroneously  sup- 
posed, the  partition  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  was  at  hand, 
Greece,  morally,  geographically,  ethnographically,  was  sure 
of  receiving  a  considerable  allotment  of  that  partition  when 
it  took  place. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  make  a  re-settlement  of  the  East 
of  Europe  without  largely  satisfying  the  claims  of  Greece; 
and  great  as  those  claims  might  be,  if  that  was  the  case,  it 
was  surely  unwise  in  Greece  to  waste  its  treasure  and  its 
blood.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  as  Her  Majesty's  Government 
believed,  the  end  of  this  struggle  would  not  be  a  partition  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire,  but  that  the  wisdom  and  experience 
of  all  the  powers  and  governments  would  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  existence  and  strengthening  of  the  Ottoman 
Government  was  necessary  to  the  peace  of  Europe,  and 
Avithout  it  long  and  sanguinary  and  intermitting  struggles 
must  inevitably  take  place,  it  was  equally  clear  to  us  that, 
when  the  settlement  occurred,  all  those  rebellious  tributary 
principalities  that  have  lavished  their  best  blood  and  embar- 
rassed their  finances  for  generations  would  necessarily  be 
but  scurvily  treated,  and  that  Greece,  even  under  this  alter- 
native, would  find  that  she  was  wise  in  following  the  advice 
of  England  and  not  mixing  in  fray  so  fatal.     [Cheers.] 

Well,  my  lords  and  gentlemen,  has  not  the  event  proved 
the  justice  and  accuracy  of  that  view  ?  [Cheers.]  At  this 
moment,  though  Greece  has  not  interfered,  fortunately  for 
herself,  though  she  has  not  lavished  the  blood  of  her  citizens 
and  wasted  her  treasure,  under  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  she  has 
the  opportunity  of  obtaining  a  greater  increase  of  territory 
than  will  be  attained  by  any  of  the  rebellious  principalities 
that  have  lavished  their  blood  and  wasted  their  resources  in 
this  fierce  contest.     [Cheers.] 

I  should  like  to  see  that  view  answered  by  those  who  ac- 
cuse us  of  misleading  Greece.  [Cheers.]  We  gave  to  her 
the  best  advice  ;  fortunately  for  Greece  she  followed  it,  and 
I  will  hope  that,  following  it  with  discretion  and  modera- 
tion, .she  will  not  lose  the  opportunity  we  have  secured  for 
her  in  the  advantages  she  may  yet  reap.     [Cheers.] 

I  would  make  one  more  remark  on  this  subject,  which  will 


PEACE   WITH    HONOR  25 

soon  occupy  the  attention  of  many  who  are  here  present. 
It  has  been  said  we  have  misled  and  deserted  Greece,  because 
we  were  the  power  which  took  steps  that  Greece  should  be 
heard  before  the  Congress. 

Why  did  we  do  that  ?  Because  we  had  ever  expressed 
our  opinion  that  in  the  elevation  of  the  Greek  race — not 
merely  the  subjects  of  the  King  of  Greece — one  of  the  best 
chances  of  the  improvement  of  society  under  the  Ottoman 
rule  would  be  found,  and  that  it  was  expedient  that  the 
rights  of  the  Greek  race  should  be  advocated  by  that  portion 
of  it  which  enjoyed  an  independent  political  existence;  and 
all  this  time,  too,  let  it  be  recollected  that  my  noble  friend 
was  unceasing  in  his  efforts  to  obtain  such  a  settlement  of 
the  claims,  or  rather,  I  should  say,  the  desires,  of  Greece  with 
the  Porte,  as  would  conduce  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  that 
kingdom.     [Cheers.] 

And  not  without  success.  The  proposition  of  Lord  Salis- 
bury for  the  rectification  of  the  frontiers  of  Greece  really  in- 
cludes all  that  moderate  and  sensible  men  could  desire  ;  and 
that  was  the  plan  that  ultimately  was  adopted  by  the  Con- 
gress, and  which  Greece  might  avail  herself  of  if  there  be 
prudence  and  moderation  in  her  councils.  [Cheers.]  Let 
me  here  make  one  remark  which,  indeed,  is  one  that  applies 
to  other  most  interesting  portions  of  this  great  question — it 
refers  to  the  personal  character  of  the  Sultan.  From  the 
first,  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  has  expressed  his  desire  to  deal 
with  Greece  in  a  spirit  of  friendliness  and  conciliation. 
[Cheers.]  He  has  been  perfectly  aware  that  in  the  union  of 
the  Turkish  and  Greek  races  the  only  balance  could  be  ob- 
tained and  secured  against  the  Pan-Slavic  monopoly  which 
was  fast  invading  the  whole  of  his  dominions.  [Cheers.] 
Therefore,  there  was  every  disposition  on  his  part  to  meet 
the  proposals  of  the  English  Government  with  favor,  and 
he  did  meet  them  with  favor.  [Cheers.]  Remember  the 
position  of  that  Prince.  It  is  almost  unprecedented.  No 
Prince,  probably,  that  ever  lived  has  gone  through  such 
a  series  of  catastrophes.  One  of  liis  predecessors  commits 
suicide  ;  his  immediate  predecessor  is  subject  to  a  visitation 
more  awful  even  than  suicide.  The  moment  he  ascends  the 
throne  his  ministers  are  assassinated.  A  conspiracy  breaks 
out  in  his  own  palace,  and  then  he  learns  that  his  kingdom 


26  LORD    BEACONSFIELD 

is  invaded,  his  armies,  however  valiant,  are  defeated,  and 
that  the  enemy  is  at  his  gates  ;  yet,  with  all  these  trials,  and 
during  all  this  period,  he  has  never  swerved  in  the  expres- 
sion and  I  believe  the  feeling  of  a  desire  to  deal  with  Greece 
in  a  spirit  of  friendship.      [Cheers.] 

Well,  what  has  happened  ?  What  was  the  last  expression 
of  friendship  on  his  part  ?  He  is  apparently  a  man  whose 
every  impulse  is  good  ;  however  great  the  difificulties  he  has 
to  encounter,  however  evil  the  influences  that  may  sometimes 
control  him,  his  impulses  are  good  ;  and  where  impulses  are 
good,  there  is  always  hope.  He  is  not  a  tyrant — he  is  not 
dissolute — he  is  not  a  bigot  or  corrupt.  What  was  his  last 
decision  ? 

When  my  noble  friend,  not  encouraged  I  must  say,  by 
Greece,  but  still  continuing  his  efforts,  endeavored  to  bring 
to  some  practical  result  this  question  of  the  frontiers,  the 
Sultan  said  that  what  he  was  prepared  to  do  he  w'ished 
should  be  looked  on  as  an  act  of  grace  on  his  part,  and  of 
his  sense  of  the  friendliness  of  Greece  in  not  attacking  him 
during  his  troubles  ;  but  as  the  Congress  was  now  to  meet, 
he  should  like  to  hear  the  result  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Con- 
gress on  the  subject.  The  Congress  has  now  spoken,  and 
though  it  declared  that  it  did  not  feel  justified  in  compelling 
the  Sultan  to  adopt  steps  it  might  think  advantageous  even 
for  his  own  interests,  the  Congress  expressed  an  opinion 
which,  I  doubt  not,  the  Sultan  is  prepared  to  consider  in  the 
spirit  of  conciliation  he  has  so  often  displayed.  And  this  is 
the  moment  when  a  party,  for  factious  purposes  [cheers],  and 
a  party  unhappily  not  limited  to  England,  is  egging  on 
Greece  to  violent  courses  ! 

I  may,  perhaps,  have  touched  at  too  much  length  on  this 
topic,  but  the  attacks  made  on  Her  Majesty's  Government 
are  nothing  compared  with  the  public  mischief  that  may 
occur  if  misconception  exists  on  this  point.  [Cheers.] 
There  is  one  other  point  on  which  I  would  make  a  remark, 
and  that  is  with  regard  to  the  Convention  of  Constantinople 
of  the  fourth  of  June. 

When  I  study  the  catalogue  of  congratulatory  regrets 
with  attention,  this  appears  to  be  the  ground  on  which  a 
great  assault  is  to  be  made  on  the  Government.  It  is  said 
that  we  have  increased,  and   dangerously   increased,  our  re* 


PEACE   WITH    HONOR  27 

sponsibilities  as  a  nation  by  that  Convention.  In  the  first 
place,  I  deny  that  we  have  increased  our  responsibilities  by 
that  Convention.  I  maintain  that  by  that  Convention  we 
have  lessened  our  responsibilities.  Suppose  now,  for  ex- 
ample, the  settlement  of  Europe  had  not  included  the  Con- 
vention of  Constantinople  and  the  occupation  of  the  isle  of 
Cyprus  ;  suppose  it  had  been  limited  to  the  mere  Treaty  of 
Berlin ;  what,  under  all  probable  circumstances,  might  then 
have  occurred?  In  ten,  fifteen,  it  might  be  in  twenty,  years, 
the  power  and  resources  of  Russia  having  revived,  some 
quarrel  would  again  have  occurred,  Bulgarian  or  otherwise 
[cheers],  and  in  all  probability  the  armies  of  Russia  would 
have  been  assailing  the  Ottoman  dominions  both  in  Eu- 
rope and  Asia,  and  enveloping  and  enclosing  the  city  of 
Constantinople  and  its  all-powerful  position.     [Cheers.] 

Now,  what  would  be  the  probable  conduct,  under  these 
circumstances,  of  the  Government  of  this  country,  whoever 
the  ministers  might  be,  whatever  party  might  be  in  power? 
I  fear  there  might  be  hesitation  for  a  time — a  want  of  de- 
cision— a  want  of  firmness;  but  no  one  doubts  that  ultimately 
England  would  have  said  :  "  This  will  never  do  ;  we  must 
prevent  the  conquest  of  Asia  Minor  [cheers]  ;  we  must  in- 
terfere in  this  matter,  and  arrest  the  course  of  Russia." 
[Cheers.]  No  one,  I  am  sure,  in  this  country  who  impar- 
tially considers  this  question  can  for  a  moment  doubt  what, 
under  any  circumstances,  would  have  been  the  course  of  this 
country.     [Cheers.] 

Well,  then,  that  being  the  case,  I  say  it  is  extremely  im- 
portant that  this  country  should  take  a  step  beforehand 
[cheers]  which  should  indicate  what  the  policy  of  England 
would  be  ;  that  you  should  not  have  your  Ministers  meet- 
ing in  a  Council  Chamber,  hesitating  and  doubting  and  con- 
sidering contingencies,  and  then  acting  at  last,  but  acting 
perhaps  too  late.  [Cheers.]  I  say,  therefore,  that  the  respon- 
sibilities of  this  country  have  not  been  increased  [cheers]  ;  the 
responsibilities  already  existed,  though  I  for  one  would  never 
shrink  from  increasing  the  responsibilities  of  this  country,  if 
they  are  responsibilities  Avhich  ought  to  be  undertaken. 
[Cheers.]  The  responsibilities  of  this  country  are  prattically 
diminished  by  the  course  we  have  taken. 

My  lords  and  gentlemen,  one  of  the  results  of  my  attend- 


28  LORD    BEACONSFIELD 

ing  the  Congress  of  Berlin  has  been  to  prove,  what  I  always 
suspected  to  be  the  absolute  fact,  that  neither  the  Crimean 
war,  nor  this  horrible  devastating  war  which  has  just  ter- 
minated, would  have  taken  place,  if  England  had  spoken 
with  the  necessary  firmness.     [Loud  cheers.] 

Russia  has  complaints  to  make  against  this  country  that 
neither  in  the  case  of  the  Crimean  war  nor  on  this  occasion 
— and  I  do  not  shrink  from  my  share  of  the  responsibility  in 
this  matter — was  the  voice  of  England  so  clear  and  decided 
as  to  exercise  a  due  share  in  the  guidance  of  European 
opinion.     [Cheers.] 

Suppose,  gentlemen,  that  my  noble  friend  and  I  had 
come  back  with  the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  and  had  not  taken  the 
step  which  is  to  be  questioned  within  the  next  eight-and- 
forty  hours,  could  we,  with  any  self-respect,  have  met  our 
countrymen  when  they  asked,  what  securities  have  you 
made  for  the  peace  of  Europe?  How  far  have  you  dimin- 
ished the  chance  of  perpetually  recurring  war  on  this  question 
of  the  East  by  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  ?  Why,  they  could  say, 
all  we  have  gained  by  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  is  probably  the 
peace  of  a  few  years,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  the  same 
phenomenon  will  arise  and  the  Ministers  of  England  must 
patch  up  the  affair  as  well  as  they  could. 

That  was  not  the  idea  of  public  duty  entertained  by  my 
noble  friend  and  myself.  [Cheers.]  We  thought  the  time 
had  come  when  we  ought  to  take  steps  which  would  produce 
some  order  out  of  the  anarchy  and  chaos  that  had  so  long 
prevailed.  [Cheers.]  We  asked  ourselves,  was  it  absolutely 
a  necessity  that  the  fairest  provinces  of  the  world  should  be 
the  most  devastated  and  most  ill-used, and  for  this  reason  that 
there  is  no  security  for  life  or  property  so  long  as  that  country 
is  in  perpetual  fear  of  invasion  and  aggression  ?     [Cheers.] 

It  was  under  these  circumstances  that  we  recommended 
the  course  we  have  taken ;  and  I  believe  that  the  con- 
sequences of  that  policy  will  tend  to  and  even  secure  peace 
and  order  in  a  portion  of  the  globe  which  hitherto  has 
seldom  been  blessed  by  these  celestial  visitants.       [Cheers.] 

I  hold  that  we  have  laid  the  foundation  of  a  state  of 
affairs  which  may  open  a  new  continent  to  the  civilization 
of  Europe  [cheers],  and  that  the  welfare  of  the  world  and 
the  wealth    of   the   world    may   be   increased    by   availing 


PEACK    WITH    HONOR  29 

ourselves  of  that  tranquillity  and  order  which  the  more 
intimate  connection  of  England  with  that  country  will  now 
produce.     [Cheers.] 

But  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  though  we  taxed  our  brains  and 
our  thought  to  establish  a  policy  which  might  be  beneficial  to 
the  country,  we  have  not  satisfied  those  who  arc  our  critics. 
[Cheers.] 

I  was  astonished  to  learn  that  the  Convention  of  the  fourth 
of  June  has  been  described  as  "  an  insane  convention."  It  is 
a  strong  epithet.  I  do  not  myself  pretend  to  be  as  competent 
a  judge  of  insanity  as  my  right  honorable  opponent.  [Glad- 
stone.] I  will  not  say  to  the  right  honorable  gentleman, 
navigct  Anticyratn,  but  I  would  put  this  issue  to  an  English 
jury — Which  do  you  believe  the  most  likely  to  enter  into 
an  insane  convention — a  body  of  English  gentlemen  hon- 
ored by  the  favor  of  their  Sovereign  and  the  confidence  of 
their  fellow-subjects,  managing  your  affairs  for  five  years,  I 
hope  with  prudence,  and  not  altogether  without  success 
[cheers],  or  a  sophisticated  rhetorician,  inebriated  with  the 
exuberance  of  his  own  verbosity  [loud  cheers  and  laughter], 
and  gifted  with  an  egotistical  imagination  that  can  at  all 
times  command  an  interminable  and  inconsistent  series  of 
arguments  to  malign  an  opponent  and  to  glorify  himself? 
[Continued  cheers  and  laughter.] 

My  lords  and  gentlemen,  I  leave  the  decision  upon  that 
Convention  to  the  Parliament  and  people  of  England. 
[Loud  cheers.]  I  believe  that  in  that  policy  arc  deeply  laid 
the  seeds  of  future  welfare,  not  merely  to  England,  but  to 
Europe  and  Asia ;  and  confident  that  the  policy  we  have 
recommended  is  one  that  will  be  supported  by  the  country, 
I  and  those  that  act  with  me  can  endure  these  attacks. 
[Loud  cheers.] 

My  lords  and  gentlemen,  let  me  thank  you  once  more 
for  the  manner  in  which  you  have  welcomed  me  to-day. 
[Cheers.]  These  are  the  rewards  of  public  life  that  never 
pall  [cheers] — the  sympathy  of  those  who  have  known  you 
long,  who  have  worked  with  you  long,  who  have  the  same 
opinions  upon  the  policy  that  should  be  pursued  in  this 
great  and  ancient  Empire.  [Cheers.]  These  are  the  senti- 
ments  which  no  language  can  sufficiently  appreciate — 
which  are  a  consolation  under  all  circumstances  and  the  high- 


30  LORD    BEACONSFIELD 

est  reward  that  a  public  man  can  attain.  The  generous  feel- 
ing that  has  prompted  you  to  welcome  my  colleague  and  my- 
self on  our  return  to  England  will  inspire  and  strengthen 
our  efforts  to  serve  our  country  [cheers],  and  it  is  not  merely 
that  in  this  welcome  you  encourage  those  who  are  doing 
their  best  for  what  they  conceive  to  be  the  public  interest, 
but  to  tell  to  Europe  also  that  England  is  a  grateful 
country  and  knows  how  to  appreciate  the  efforts  of  those  of 
her  public  servants  who  are  resolved  to  maintain  to  their 
utmost  the  Empire  of  Great  Britain.     [Prolonged  applause.] 


THE  KING  OF  THE  BELGIANS 

[.Speech  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  at  the  dinner  of  the  Royal  Literary  Fund, 
London,  May  8,  1S72.  Leopold  II,  King  of  the  Belgians,  was  present  as 
chairman,  and  his  health  was  proposed  by  Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  ad- 
dressed His  Majesty  as  "  Sire."  The  King's  father  here  alluded  to  was 
Prince  Leopold  of  Saxe-Coburg,  elected  King  of  the  Belgians  in  June, 
1831.] 

Sire  : — Forty  years  ago  a  portion  of  Europe,  and  one  not 
the  least  fair,  seemed  doomed  by  an  inexorable  fate  to  per- 
manent dependence  and  periodical  devastation.  And  yet  the 
conditions  of  that  country  were  favorable  to  civilization  and 
human  happiness :  a  fertile  soil  skilfully  cultivated,  a  land 
covered  with  beautiful  cities  and  occupied  by  a  race  prone 
alike  to  liberty  and  religion,  and  always  excelling  in  the  fine 
arts.  In  the  midst  of  a  European  convulsion,  a  great  states- 
man resolved  to  terminate  that  deplorable  destiny,  and  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  establishing  the  independence  of  Belgium 
on  the  principle  of  political  neutrality.  That  idea  was  wel- 
comed at  first  with  sceptical  contempt.  But  we  who  live  in 
the  after  generation  can  bear  witness  to  the  triumphant 
success  of  that  principle,  and  can  now  take  the  opportunity 
of  congratulating  that  noble  policy  which  consecrated  to 
perpetual  peace  the  battlefield  of  Europe. 

Such  a  fortunate  result  was,  no  doubt,  owing  in  a  great 
degree  to  the  qualities  of  the  race  that  inhabited  the  land. 
They  have  shown,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  under  severe 
trials,  that  they  have  possessed  those  two  qualities  which 
can  alone  enable  a  nation  to  maintain  the  principle   of  neu- 


THE    KING    OF   TIIK    DKLGIANS  3 1 

trality  alike  energy  and  discretion.  lUit  we  must  not  forget 
that  it  was  their  fortunate  lot  that  the  first  monarch  who 
ascended  their  throne  was  the  most  eminent  statesman  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  With  consummate  prudence,  with 
unerring  judgment,  with  vast  and  varied  experience,  he 
combined  those  qualities  which  at  the  same  time  win  and 
retain  tiie  heart  of  communities.  We  can  especially,  at  this 
moment,  remember  with  pride  that  he  was  virtually  an 
English  Prince — not  merely  because  he  was  doubly  allied  to 
our  Royal  race,  but  because  he  had  been  educated — and 
with  his  observant  mind  such  an  opportunity  was  invaluable 
— he  had  been  educated  for  years  in  this  country,  in  the 
practise  of  constitutional  freedom.  And  when  he  ascended 
the  throne  he  proved  at  once  that  he  was  determined  to  be, 
not  the  chief  of  a  party,  but  the  monarch  of  a  nation. 

When  he  left  us,  Europe  was  disheartened.  The  times 
were  troublous  and  menacing,  and  all  felt  how  much  depend- 
ed upon  the  character  of  his  successor.  In  the  presence  of 
that  successor  it  does  not  become  me — it  would  be  in  every 
sense  presumptuous — to  ofTer  a  panegyric.  But  I  may  be 
permitted  to  speak  of  a  public  career  in  the  language  of  crit- 
ical appreciation  ;  and  I  think  that  all  will  agree  that  the 
King  of  the  Belgians,  from  the  first  moment  at  which  he 
entered  into  public  life,  proved  that  he  was  sensible  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  that  he  felt  that  authority 
to  be  revered  must  be  enlightened,  and  that  the  seat  of  no 
sovereign  was  so  secure  as  that  of  him  who  had  confidence 
in  his  subjects.  The  King  of  the  Belgians,  our  sovereign 
chairman,  derived  from  his  royal  father  another  heritage 
besides  the  fair  province  of  Flanders ;  he  inherited  an  affec- 
tion for  the  people  of  England.  He  has  proved  that  in  many 
instances  and  on  many  occasions,  but  never,  in  my  mind, 
with  more  happy  boldness  than  when  he  crossed  the  Chan- 
nel and  determined  to  accept  our  invitation  and  become  the 
chairman  of  the  Royal  Literary  Fund. 

With  what  felicity  he  has  fulfilled  his  duties  this  evening, 
you  arc  all  witnesses,  I  have  been  connected  with  your 
society  for  many  years,  as  those  who  preceded  me  with  my 
name  also  were  long  before  ;  and  I  think  I  can  venture  to 
say  that  in  your  annals  none  of  those  who  have  sat  in  that 
chair  have  performed  its  duties  in  a  manner  more  admirable. 


32  LORD    BEACONSFIELD 

It  is  something  delightful,  though  at  first  sight  inconsistent, 
that  the  Republic  of  Letters  should,  as  it  were,  be  presided 
over  to-day  by  a  monarch  ;  but  if  there  be  a  charming  incon- 
sistency in  such  a  circumstance,  let  us  meet  it  with  one  as 
amiably  flagrant  and  give  to  our  sovereign  chairman  to-night 
a  right  royal  welcome.  It  is  with  these  feelings,  gentlemen, 
that  I  now  propose  to  you,  "The  Health  of  His  Majesty 
the  King."     [Long  continued  applause.] 


JAMES   M.    HECK 


THE  DEMOCRACY  OF  THE  MAYFLOWER 

[Speech  of  the  Hon.  James  IM.  Beck,  of  Philadelphia,  at  the  931I  anni- 
versary dinner  of  the  New  England  Society,  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
December  22,  189S.  Judge  Henry  Iv.  Ilowland,  President  of  the  Society, 
was  in  the  chair,  and  introduced  the  speaker  as  follows:  "There 
are  Pilgrims  in  Pennsylvania  who  have  been  immortalized  l)y  Whittierin 
his  poem  of  that  name.  There  have  been  records  of  difliculties  between 
Connecticut  settlers  who  trespassed  upon  the  rights  of  the  prior  occu- 
pants, for  the  early  comers  were  eager  after  land  ;  but  the  Pilgrims  we 
like  to  remember  are  peaceful  followers  of  William  Penn,  who  gave  a 
lesson  to  all  other  colonies  of  righteous  dealings  and  Christian  action 
with  the  aboriginal  inhabitants,  and  proved  themselves  a  blessing  to  the 
country.  I  have  great  pleasure  in  introducing  to  you  the  Hon.  James  M. 
Beck,  of  Philadelphia,  who  represents  that  connuonwealth,  and  who  will 
speak  to  you  upon  the  Democracy  of  the  ]\Iay flower."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  : — I  am  charged  by  the 
President  of  the  New  England  Society  of  Pennsylvania  to 
extend  its  most  cordial  greetings  to  its  sister  Society  in  New 
York.  I  am  instructed  by  our  President  to  "congratulate 
you  upon  your  long  and  honored  history,"  He  adds,  in  the 
message  which  I  bring,  and  which  I  shall  venture  to  use  as 
a  text :  "  It  is  well  for  neighbors  so  near  to  clasp  hands  fre- 
quently. With  kindred  lineage,  principles  and  aims,  we 
cannot  emphasize  too  strongly  the  truths  for  which  we 
stand.  While  honoring  the  past  our  faces  are  toward  the 
future.  We  are  confident  that  you  and  all  true  descendants 
of  the  Pilgrim  and  the  Puritan  will  wisely  and  lo)-ally  help 
our  country  in  the  new,  untried  place  among  the  nations,  to 
which  it  has  been  so  suddenly  summoned."  I  wish,  indeed, 
that  those  for  whom  1  speak  had  a  worthier  spokesman. 
Indeed,  in  this  presence,  rei)resenting  the  culture  of  the 
metropolis,  and  with  distinguished   guests  to  address  you, 

Z3 


34  JAMES    M.    BECK 

whose  names  are  household  words  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  our  land,  I  feel  as  did  a  certain  colored  de- 
fendant in  a  criminal  case  which  was  recently  tried  in  the 
United  States  District  Court  of  my  city.  He  had  been 
charged  with  selling  liquor  without  a  license,  and  the  Gov- 
ernment had  proved  a  strong  case  against  him.  When  his 
attorney  asked  him  whether  he  desired  to  take  the  stand  and 
testify  in  his  own  behalf,  the  son  of  Africa  replied  :  "  Boss, 
I  think  I  had  better  remain  neutral."  Similarly,  with  men 
like  General  Shafter  and  Governor  Roosevelt  as  your 
speakers,  I  feel  that  I  should  remain  neutral. 

Indeed,  in  the  presence  of  these  military  gentlemen,  I  feel 
as  did  the  Burgess  of  Gettysburg,  who,  on  the  first  day  of 
that  famous  battle,  sent  word  to  Generals  Lee  and  Meade 
that  it  was  against  the  ordinances  of  the  town  to  fire  off  fire- 
arms within  the  borough  limits.  A  poor  civilian,  I  serve 
like  notice  upon  the  warriors,  lest  their  rhetorical  fireworks 
overwhelm  me  to-night.  Perhaps,  however,  I  am  unneces- 
sarily borrowing  trouble — in  New  York,  as  Mr.  Pierpont 
Morgan  will  bear  me  out,  trouble  is  all  one  can  borrow  with- 
out collateral — but  can  I  not  rely  upon  )'our  generous  for- 
bearance, and  that  you  will  treat  me  with  the  same  princely 
courtesy  as  did  young  Hamlet  when  he  bade  Polonius  treat 
well  the  players  who  had  journeyed  to  Elsinore  to  entertain 
his  lordship  ?  "  Use  them,"  said  Hamlet,  "  after  your  own 
honor  and  dignity  ;  the  less  their  deserving  the  more  merit 
is  your  bounty." 

You  have  been  gracious  enough  to  assign  to  me  a  noble 
and  inspiring  toast.  It  calls  to  our  mind  that  little  vessel, 
tossing  in  the  immeasurable  waste  of  waters,  so  crowded 
with  its  cargo  of  human  life  that  the  men  slept  in  the  very 
boats  upon  the  davits,  driven  by  winter  blasts  that  -were  not 
so  relentless  as  the  spirit  of  persecution  which  the  Pilgrims 
left  behind,  and  named  the  "  Mayflower  "  in  unconscious 
prophecy  of  the  fact  that  the  long  winter  of  political  tyranny 
was  about  to  break,  and  the  springtime  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty  to  dawn  for  the  human  race.  How  fallible  are  the 
judgments  that  any  generation  places  upon  contemporaneous 
men  and  events !  How  little  the  world  took  note  of  this 
little  vessel  as  it  slowly  ploughed  its  way  westward  across 
the  waters!     How  little  did  James   the  First,  as    he    then 


THE    DEMOCRACY   OF   THE    MAYFLOWER  35 

sought  to  strangle  the  liberties  of  the  English  people,  or 
Richelieu,  as  he  then  sought  to  build  up  a  kingly  despotism, 
appreciate  that  even  then  a  little  group  of  carders,  weavers 
and  farmers  of  England  were  founding  a  colony  in  an  un- 
broken wilderness,  from  whose  vigorous  loins  would  spring 
a  mighty  Republic,  which  should  dominate  the  world  when 
the  Stuarts  and  the  Bourbons  were  alike  forgotten  !  The 
importance  of  the  central  incident  of  the  famous  voyage, 
when  those  sturdy  English  yeomen  met  in  the  cabin  of  the 
"  Mayflower  "and  created  of  themselves  a"  civil  body  politic  " 
has  sometimes  been  exaggerated.  The  rocking  cabin  of  the 
"  Mayflower"  was  not  the  cradle  of  democracy.  There  were 
brave  men  before  Agamemnon,  and  similarly  there  were 
sturdy  champions  of  popular  rights  long  before  the  famous 
compact.  Indeed,  it  should  not  require  this  gracious  season 
of  Christmas  time  to  remind  us  that  the  true  cradle  of  de- 
mocracy was  the  manger  at  Bethlehem.  When  the  son  of 
a  Nazareth  carpenter  brought  to  the  world  the  gospel  of  the 
fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man  he  ennobled 
the  individual,  destroyed  the  spirit  of  caste  and  made  de- 
mocracy in  its  broadest  and  noblest  sense  inevitable. 

It  should  also  be  remembered  that  the  real  vigor  of  our 
institutions  is  due  not  so  much  to  the  rule  of  the  majority 
as  to  the  restraints  which  our  institutions  place  upon  the 
power  of  the  majority.  Democracy  has  not  destroyed  the 
superstition  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  in  order  to  create 
another,  almost  as  indefensible,  of  the  divine  right  of  majori- 
ties.  It  does  not  believe  that  the  oil  of  anointing,  which 
was  supposed  to  consecrate  the  person  and  the  acts  of  a 
king,  has  fallen  upon  the  multitudinous  tongue  of  the  people 
and  invested  it  with  infallibility.  In  the  evolution  of  Ameri- 
can institutions,  we  have  learned  to  make  w\ar  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  many  as  wx>ll  as  that  of  the  few.  If  the 
American  Republic  has  enjoyed  an  unparalleled  and  almost 
miraculous  growth,  it  is  due  not  merely  to  the  natural  re- 
sources, with  which  God  has  endowed  us  as  a  people,  but  to 
the  lofty  spirit  of  individualism,  which  our  written  constitu- 
tions and  unwritten  laws  have  sought  to  conserve.  While 
democracy  recognizes  that,  as  to  certain  measures  for  the 
common  good,  the  will  of  the  individual  must  be  subordi- 
Xiated  to  that  of  the  majority,  yet,  with  this  saving  rcserva- 


36  JAMES    M.    BECK 

tion,  its  purpose  is  to  insure  the  largest  freedom  to  the  State, 
the  community  and  the  individual.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  democracy  is  eminently  progressive.  It  grows  with  the 
individual.  Of  necessity,  its  spirit  is  of  progress.  With  it 
expansion  is  an  instinct.     It  cannot  stand  still. 

It  is  well  to  remember  this  at  this  important  crisis,  when 
our  country  is  confronted  with  problems  greater  than  any 
in  all  its  history,  with  the  exception  of  the  civil  war.  Within 
twelve  months  a  momentous  revolution — or  shall  I  say  evo- 
lution— has  taken  place  in  the  spirit  and  purposes  of  the 
American  people.  Twelve  months  ago  we  were  a  politically 
isolated  Republic.  To-day  we  are  a  world  empire.  On  the  night 
that  the  explosion  of  the  "  Maine  "  shook  the  foundations 
of  the  deep  in  the  harbor  of  Havana,  I  spoke  at  a  banquet 
in  this  city,  and,  unconscious  of  that  which  was  then  taking 
place  in  Havana,  and  in  describing  the  potential  power  of 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  I  said  :  "  The  President, 
with  a  stroke  of  his  pen,  could  shake  the  equilibrium  of  the 
world."  The  possibility  has  become  a  fact.  When  George 
Dewey  sailed  his  little  fleet  past  sleeping  forts  and  over 
hidden  mines  and  annihilated  his  opponents,  a  new  epoch  in 
our  country  and  the  world  was  begun,  and  when  the  Spanish 
flag  fell  from  the  masthead  of  the  "  Reina  Cristina  "  one  world 
empire  had  ended,  another  had  begun.  The  President  has 
shaken  the  political  equipoise  of  nations.  In  so  doing  he 
has  followed,  and  not  led,  a  mysterious  and  puissant  impulse 
of  the  people. 

Is  the  Western  Hemisphere  large  enough  for  the  influence 
and  progress  of  the  American  people,  or  must  we  surrender, 
commercially  and  politically,  our  policy  of  isolation,  and 
claim  an  influence  which  shall  be  as  limitless  as  the  world  is 
round?  The  Atlantic  coast  was  our  cradle  ;  lusty  youth  found 
us  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  ;  vigorous  maturity  has 
brought  us  to  the  Pacific.  What  of  that  momentous  morrow, 
the  twentieth  century?  Are  we,  like  Alexander,  to  stop  at 
the  margin  of  the  sea  and  mourn  that  it  forever  bars  our 
further  progress,  or  are  we,  like  the  inspired  pilot  of  Genoa, 
to  launch  the  bark  of  our  national  destiny  into  an  unknown 
sea,  in  search  of  new  and  untried  routes  to  national  pros- 
perity ? 

It   is  not  my  purpose  to  discuss  this  great  and  burning 


THE    DEMOCRACY    OK    Till':    MAYFLOWER  37 

question,  but  I  do  want  to  emphasize  the  thought  that  be- 
cause democracy  is  progressive  it  cannot  be  cabined,  cribbed 
and  confined  within  the  narrow  limits  of  any  traditional 
policy.  Blind  adherence  to  tradition  is  not  the  highest 
patriotism,  but  is  a  form  of  intellectual  slavery  not  worthy 
of  a  free  and  progressive  people.  An  assumption  that  the 
teachings  of  our  fathers  expressed  the  finality  of  political 
wisdom  is  contradicted  by  the  uniform  experience  of  man- 
kind. The  Almighty  never  intended  that  wisdom  should 
die  either  with  one  man,  one  generation,  one  race,  one  cen- 
tury, or  one  epoch.  Least  of  any  people  should  America 
doubt  the  "  increasing  purpose"  of  the  ages,  and  the  widen- 
ing of  thought  "  with  the  process  of  the  suns."  Our  fathers 
recognized  that  wise  nations,  as  wise  individuals,  change 
their  minds  when  occasion  justifies,  but  fools  never.  They, 
too,  had  their  traditional  policy  of  loyalty  to  the  king,  hatred 
of  France,  pride  in  the  English  empire,  and  disinclination 
towards  any  union  between  themselves.  When  the  revolu- 
tion broke  out  nothing  was  further  from  their  purpose  than 
separation  from  England.  "  Building  better  than  they 
knew,"  as  all  master  builders  of  a  nation,  our  fathers  were 
led,  not  by  any  conscious  leadership,  but  by  an  instinctive 
impulse  of  the  masses,  to  disregard  every  tradition  which 
they  held  dear,  to  renounce  allegiance  to  the  king,  separate 
from  the  great  English  empire  and  make  formal  alliance 
with  their  hated  enemy,  France,  and  create  a  union  of  which 
each  had  been  but  too  jealous.  Let  us,  therefore,  not 
ascribe  to  our  fathers  an  infallibility  which  they  did  not 
claim  for  themselves.  Democracy  acknowledges  no  living 
sovereign,  much  less  those  who  are  said  to  "  rule  us  from 
their  urns."  The  decadence  of  Spain,  which  has  cost  her 
the  empire  of  the  world  and  now  brought  her  to  the  verge 
of  final  ruin,  is  due  to  her  "  inordinate  tenacity  of  old  opin- 
ions, old  beliefs,  and  old  habits,"  which  Buckle  finds  to  be 
her  predominant  national  characteristic. 

Great  and  heroic  as  are  the  figures  of  our  epic  age,  democ- 
racy is  too  progressive  to  permit  the.  past  to  fetter  the 
present.  The  Republic  cannot  stand  still.  It  must  move 
onward.  From  civilization  it  derives  inestimable  rights ;  to 
her  it  owes  immeasurable  duties,  to  shirk  which  would  be 
cowardice  and  moral  death.      No  nation  can   live  to  itself, 


38  JAMES    M.    BECK 

even  if  it  would.  The  economic  developments  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  have  produced  a  solidarity  of  humanity 
which  no  racial  prejudice  or  international  hatred  can  de- 
stroy. Each  nation  is  its  brother's  keeper,  and  the  greater 
the  power  the  greater  the  responsibility.  If  this  be  so,  no 
nation  owes  a  greater  duty  to  civilization,  to  be  potential  in 
the  councils  of  the  world,  than  the  United  States.  For  it 
to. skulk  and  shirk  behind  the  selfish  policy  of  isolation  and 
to  abdicate  a  destined  world  supremacy  would  be  the  col- 
ossal crime  of  history.  The  stern  but  just  law  which  has 
governed  the  nations  in  all  history  is  that  he  alone  shall 
have  who  uses.  Of  every  rotten  tree  the  eternal  inquiry  of 
the  Great  Woodman  is  heard  :  "  Why  cumbereth  it  the 
ground  ?  " 

I  would  not  be  understood,  however,  as  saying  that  the 
traditional  policy  of  our  country  is  opposed  to  colonization. 
On  the  contrary,  wc  have  been,  with  the  single  exception  of 
England,  the  greatest  colonizing  power  of  the  world.  We 
are  sprung  from  a  race  of  colonists,  the  greatest  of  the 
world,  and  their  blood  flows  in  our  veins.  To  Massa- 
chusetts came  the  Englishman  ;  to  New  York,  the  Dutch  ; 
to  Delaware,  the  Swede  ;  to  Pennsylvania,  the  Quaker,  the 
Scotchman,  the  Welsh  and  the  German  ;  to  Virginia,  the 
Cavalier;  to  Georgia,  the  Huguenot;  to  Florida,  the  Span- 
iard ;  to  Louisiana,  the  French, — and  thus  the  bravest  and 
wisest  colonists  of  all  history  constructed  the  foundations 
of  the  American  Republic.  Since  then  our  entire  history 
has  been  one  of  colonial  enterprise.  The  people  have 
always  been  in  advance  of  the  Government,  and  have  sturdily 
pushed  their  settlements  westward  into  the  unbroken  wilder- 
ness, and  each  year  reclaimed  vaster  areas  of  untrodden 
land  to  the  uses  of  civilization.  Before  the  present  Consti- 
tution was  framed,  the  Continental  Congress  had  persuaded 
the  States  to  cede  their  claims  to  the  land  west  of  the  Allc- 
ghanies  to  the  central  government  as  a  national  domain  for 
colonial  enterprise,  and  the  Northwest  Ordinance  of  1787 
could  still  be  a  model  for  all  colonial  government,  which  we 
may  hereafter  acquire.  Originally  the  Alleghanies  were  re- 
garded as  our  western  boundary,  but  the  people  refused  to 
be  confined  within  these  narrow  limits,  and,  crossing  the 
mountains,  planted  their  colonics    in  Tennessee  and  Ken- 


THE    DEMOCRACY    OF   THE    MAYFLOWER  39 

tucky,  which  subsequently  became  Territories,  and  later 
States. 

The  magic  of  a  name  has  sometimes  obscured  this  signi- 
ficant phase  of  our  history.  We  have  called  our  colonies 
Territories,  but  colonies  they  remain  in  the  truest  sense  of 
the  word,  until  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  sovereign  States. 
At  all  times  their  legitimate  claims  upon  our  consideration 
have  vitally  affected  our  policy.  It  was  the  colonics  in  Ken- 
tucky and  Tennessee  which  led  our  country  to  claim  the 
territory  to  the  Mississippi  as  the  true  western  boundary  of 
our  country.  It  was  again  the  colonies  in  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi  which  led  Jefferson  to  purchase  Louisiana  in 
order  to  preserve  forever  for  the  American  people  the  great 
pathway  of  commerce,  the  Mississippi  River.  It  was  the 
colonies  in  Florida  that  led  to  the  purchase  of  that  State ; 
it  was  the  colonies  in  Texas  which,  revolting  against  Mex- 
ico and  forming  an  independent  State,  were  later  annexed 
to  the  American  Republic ;  it  was,  again,  the  colonies  in 
Oregon  which  compelled  an  unwilling  Congress  to  remem- 
ber their  existence,  and  which  saved  that  noble  country  be- 
tween the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Pacific  to  the  Union. 
No  argument  against  territorial  expansion  can  be  so  false 
to  our  history  as  that  which  asserts  that  we  lack  experience 
in  colonization.  Sprung,  as  we  are,  from  the  teeming  womb 
of  England,  we  could  not  be  other  than  a  colonizing  power, 
if  we  would. 

Let  us  not  be  fearful  as  to  our  manifest  destiny.  Our 
Republic,  like  young  Siegfried  in  the  old  Teutonic  leg- 
end, has  fashioned  at  the  flaming  forge  of  war  the  magic  sword 
of  the  world's  supremacy.  The  Treaty  of  Paris  ended  one 
empire  and  commenced  another,  which  in  area,  numbers, 
power  and  influence,  will  exceed  that  of  Alexander  or  Caesar, 
Charlemagne  or  Napoleon.  To-day  the  Republic  is  the  true 
centre  of  the  world,  with  the  Occident  on  our  right  and  the 
Orient  on  our  left.  Let  us  have  faith  that  the  Ruler  of  Na- 
tions, who  has  led  us  thus  far,  will  give  us  no  problem  too 
great  for  our  solution,  and  no  work  too  great  for  our 
achievement.  To  grasp  faintly  the  future  of  this  country 
is  to  bewilder  and  exhaust  the  imagination.  The  past  is 
but  the  "  happy  prologue  to  the  swelling  act  of  an  imper- 
ial theme."     To-day,  as  never  before,  we  face  the  world  as 


40  JAMES   M.    BECK 

a  united  country.  If  wounds  there  have  been,  they  are 
healed  ;  if  cause  for  quarrel,  it  has  gone.  East  and  west 
from  the  Father  of  Waters,  north  and  south  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line,  we  are  one  to-day,  my  fellow-countrymen  ;  one, 
in  the  proud  possession  of  a  glorious  past ;  one,  in  a  resolute 
purpose  to  meet  the  duties  of  the  hour,  and  one,  in  an  abid- 
ing faith  in  the  future  of  our  beloved  countr)\  For  one 
land,  one  people,  one  flag,  and  one  destiny,  let  us  reverently 
thank  the  God  of  our  fathers.  May  the  glory  of  the  Re- 
public be  as  lasting  as  the  day  which  shines  upon  her  flag, 
and  her  beneficent  influence  upon  future  generations  as 
ceaseless  as  the  majestic  flow  of  the  Mississippi  to  the  sea. 

Such  has  been  the  marvellous  growth  of  the  democracy  of 
the  "  Mayflower."  It  has  realized,  beyond  his  most  far-reach- 
ing imagination,  the  vision  of  the  Puritan  poet,  Milton,  when 
he  said  :  "  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and  puissant 
nation,  rousing  itself  like  a  strong  man  after  his  sleep,  and 
shaking  her  invincible  locks.  Methinks  I  see  her  as  an  eagle 
mewing  her  mighty  youth  and  kindling  her  undazzled  eyes 
at  the  full  midday  beam,  purging  and  unsealing  her  long- 
abused  eyesight  at  the  fountain  itself  of  heavenly  radiance." 
[Applause.] 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM 

[Speech  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  at  the  sixty-eighth  anniversary  banquet 
of  the  New  England  Society   in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22,  1S73 
The  President    of    the    Society,    Elliot   C.    Cowden,    presided,    and    an- 
nounced that  the  seventh  r^gidar  toast,  "  Religious  Freedom,"  would  be 
responded  to  by  Mr.  Beecher,  "  that  most  gifted  son  of  New  England."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen: — I  have  attended 
many  New  England  dinners  [laughter],  I  have  eaten  very 
few.  [Laughter.]  I  think  I  have  never  attended  one  in 
<vhich  there  has  been  such  good  speaking  as  to-night,  and 
so  much  of  it  [laughter]  ;  and  as  I  bear  in  memory  a  sen- 
tence from  the  Book  with  which  I  am  supposed  to  be  familiar 
[laughter],  that  "  a  full  soul  loatheth  a  feast,"  I  do  not  pro- 
pose to  stuff  you  at  this  late  period  with  a  long  speech 
[laughter],  for  I  have  been  myself  a  sufferer  under  like  cir- 
cumstances. [Laughter.]  It  does  seem  a  pity,  and  would 
to  you  if  you  had  ever  been  speech-makers,  to  cut  out  an 
elaborate  speech  with  weeks  of  toil  in  order  that  it  may  be 
extemporized  admirably  [laughter],  and  then  to  find  your- 
self drifted  so  late  into  the  evening  that  everybody  is  tired 
of  speeches.  What  must  a  man  under  such  circumstances 
do  ?  As  he  abhors  novelty,  he  cannot  make  a  new  one,  and 
he  goes  on  to  make  his  old  speech,  and  it  falls  still-born 
upon  the  ears  of  the  listeners.  I  do  not  propose,  therefore, 
to  give  you  the  benefit  of  all  that  eloquence  that  I  have 
stored  up  for  you  to-night.  [Laughter.]  I  merely  say  that 
if  you  had  only  heard  the  speech  that  I  was  going  to  de- 
liver, you  would  pity  me  for  the  speech  that  I  am  now 
delivering.  [Laughter.]  One  of  the  most  precious  ele- 
ments of  religious  liberty  is  the  right  of  a  sensible  man  not 
to  speak  [laughter],  or  even  to  make  a  poor  speech. 

41 


42  HENRY   WARD    BEECHER 

To  go  back  to  the  New  England  days  and  to  our  fathers 
who  have  been — well,  I  have  no  doubt  of  the  communion 
of  the  saints,  and,  therefore,  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  blessed 
spirits  that  have  got  rid  of  this  world  pay  good  attention  in 
the  other  land  to  what  is  going  on  here,  and  are  interested 
in  all  the  compliments  they  receive  [laughter]  ;  and  though 
I  suppose  heaven  to  be  a  very  busy  place,  and  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  to  be  exceedingly  busy  all  the  year  round,  yet,  on 
the  twenty-second  of  December,  earthly  reckoning,  they 
must  have  the  hardest  day  of  the  whole  period  which  we 
call  year.  [Laughter.]  I  can  imagine  them  going  around 
with  fragments  of  these  speeches  on  their  heads  as  extem- 
porized crowns  [laughter]  ;  and  far  be  it  from  me  who,  I  be- 
lieve, have  some  ancestors  there — I  hope  it  is  there 
[laughter] — far  be  it  from  me  to  impose  any  additional 
burden  of  sympathy  upon  them.  [Laughter.]  The  old 
New  England  divines  were  good  fellows  in  their  day,  jovial 
men — not  on  public  occasions  [laughter] — men  given  to  the 
cup  and  to  the  pipe  in  due  measure,  and  to  good  stories  as 
well  as  to  good  conduct,  but  always  with  discretion — always 
at  home  after  the  door  was  shut,  because  the  example  to  the 
flock  must  be  reverend — the  flock  must  be  led  by  sobriety  ; 
but  really,  as  I  recollect  the  days  in  my  father's  parlor,  when 
I  used  to  be  sent  for  the  tobacco  and  for  the  rum,  when 
the  ministers  came  around,  in  old  Connecticut,  before  the 
temperance  days,  when  the  parlor  was  blue  with  smoke 
and  uproarious  with  laughter,  I  am  sure  that  I  have  never 
been  in  any  assembly  anywhere,  where  there  was  so  much 
good-fellowship,  nor  anywhere  else — except  here — where  I 
thought  there  was  so  much  wit  as  there  used  to  be  in  old 
New  England  [laughter]  ;  and  much  of  that  which  has  been 
witty  to-night  I  attribute  to  the  proximity  of  the  generals, 
statesmen,  and  lawyers  to  the  clergy.     [Laughter.] 

In  regard  to  the  subject  matter  of  the  toast  which  I  was 
to  speak  to,  I  wish  to  say  this  :  that  those  who  have  op- 
pressed men  by  religion  have  only  done  by  that  instrument 
what  everybody  else  has  been  trying  to  do  by  every  other 
instrument.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  Everybody  that 
has  any  gumption  is  a  pope,  or  would  be  glad  to  be.  That 
spirit  of  self,  with  a  consciousness  of  power,  with  an  intense 
sense  of   right  and  of  truth,  and  a  disposition   to  project  it 


RELIGIOUS    FRKEDOM  43 

upon  others,  is  of  necessity  a  domineering  spirit,  and  it  is 
that  that  attempts  to  make  men  bend  to  your  sense  of  what 
is  true  and  what  is  right.  I  do  not,  therefore,  wonder  that 
there  is  a  spirit  of  despotism.  I  do  not  wonder  at  it  any 
more  than  I  wonder  that  mankind  love  to  govern  and  be 
governed;  for  there  are  two  sides.  It  is  not  the  fault  of 
the  dry  pole  that  is  put  into  the  ground  that  the  morning- 
glory  twines  round  about  it,  and  won't  stand  up  itself.  I 
would  like  to  be  a  dry  stick  myself,  and  have  a  convolvulus 
twining  around  me  with  its  ineffable  beauty.  [Applause.] 
It  is  not  the  fault  of  the  minister  that  the  true  and  comely 
and  excellent  ones  lean  on  him  and  insist  upon  being  led  by 
him,  and  thought  for  by  him.  It  is  not  strange  that  clergy, 
men  think  they  hear  angel  voices,  even  among  their  own 
parishioners,  under  such  circumstances.  If  you  take  a  man 
out  from  the  common  people  and  tell  him  he  is  something 
wonderful,  tell  him  that  he  is  a  man  of — his  mother  ? — 
no,  but  a  man  of  God,  and  therefore  so  far  different  from 
his  neighbors,  that  he  stands  in  the  electric  chain,  and  gets 
his  inspiration  fresh  from  the  apostolic  age,  as  then  it  was 
had  fresh  from  heaven  ;  that  he  is,  by  reason  of  having  this 
extra  dose  of  good  sense  and  infallibility,  something  more 
than  other  men — only  tell  him  so  long  enough,  put  your 
hand  on  his  head  so  as  to  rub  it  into  him,  make  him  feel  it 
in  his  heart,  bring  round  about  it  his  conscience,  and  j-ou 
have  made  a  despot. 

It  may  be  a  despot  that  turns  the  ecclesiastical  machinery 
of  the  church,  so  that  everybody  has  to  keep  step  to  the 
music  exactly.  It  is  not  his  fault  ;  his  parishioners  make 
him  do  it.  He  may  turn  that  despotism  into  dogma  ;  it  is 
not  his  fault.  He  himself  became  first  the  subject,  and  then 
the  master,  and  then  the  despot.  If  there  were  not  men 
who  wanted  to  be  governed,  there  Avould  not  be  so  many 
men  who  wanted  to  govern  them  ;  and  if  men  in  the  Church, 
administering  the  Church  as  an  institution,  administering  its 
ordinances  or  its  doctrines,  are  imperious,  if  they  are  arro- 
gant, you  make  them  so.  They  did  not  set  out  to  be  so. 
It  is  inherent  in  the  fundamental  falsity  of  this  idea,  that 
any  body  of  men  on  earth  are  commissioned  to  govern  any 
other  body  of  men  by  reason,  or  by  their  conscience,  on  the 
supposition  that  they  are  nearer  to  God  than  others.     [Ap- 


44  HENRY    WARD    BEECHER 

plause.]  It  is  not  the  New  Testament  idea,  which  says, 
"  Ye  are  all  brethren."  There  is  democracy  for  you  ! 
Brotherhood  never  harmed  anybody,  because  brotherhood 
proceeds  ever  with  justice  for  its  instrument,  in  the  spirit  of 
benevolence  and  love,  and  works  by  sympathy,  works  by  the 
heart  more  than  by  the  head.  Now,  the  moment  that  any 
man  stands  among  his  fellowmen  and  says,  "  I  own  God, 
and  I  own  all  God's  decrees,  and  I  am  empowered  to  enforce 
them  upon  you,  and  I  bring  down  all  that  is  terrible  in  the 
world  to  lay  it  upon  the  imagination  and  upon  the  fear  and 
upon  the  conscience  and  upon  the  conduct  and  the  life  of 
men  " — the  moment  that  any  man  has  taken  possession  of 
that  vast  and  populous  invisible  realm,  that  very  moment, 
of  necessity,  he  becomes  an  enemy  to  liberty,  a  leader  to- 
ward captivity,  and  men  are  bound  by  him  to  be  servants. 

So,  then,  if  men  are  oppressed  by  the  Church,  it  is  only 
because,  through  weakness,  they  invited  it ;  it  is  because, 
through  indifference,  they  permitted  it.  Who  arc  the  makers 
of  ecclesiastical  despots?  Weak  men.  Power  is  not  easily 
oppressed !  It  is  weakness  that  is  oppressed.  Strong, 
robust,  round,  and  all-sided  men  are  not  often  oppressed  as 
citizens,  they  always  escape.  It  is  the  poor,  the  ignorant, 
those  that  do  not  know  how  to  defend  themselves,  that  in 
civil  things  or  in  intellectual  realms  are  oppressed,  and  in 
moral  realms  as  well  ;  and  the  remedy  for  ecclesiastical  op- 
pression is,  make  the  common  people  stronger  and  wiser. 
[Applause.]  Give  them  intelligence,  and  make  them  under- 
stand that  indifference  to  religion  is  invitation  to  despotism 
[applause]  ;  that  those  men  who  have  faith  in  God  and 
have  faith  that  God  is  Father,  believe  also  in  manhood  and 
men.  Give  to  men  earnestness,  consciousness  of  their  own 
affairs,  self-respect  and  knowledge,  and  then  insist  upon  it 
that  they  shall  use  them  ;  give  to  men  this  spirit,  and  there 
shall  be  found  no  priest  and  no  bishop  that  shall  govern 
them  except  as  the  air  governs  the  flowers,  except  as  the 
sun  governs  the  seasons,  for  the  sun  wears  no  sceptre,  but 
with  sweet  kisses  covers  the  ground  with  fragrance  and  with 
beauty.  One  soul  has  a  right  to  govern  another  if  it  loves 
it ;  but  by  authority  and  machinery  and  systematic  creeds 
or  dogma,  no  man  has  a  right  to  govern  another,  nor  can  he,  if 
those  other  men  are  not  weak,  effeminate,  indifferent,  infidel. 


RELIGIOUS  frp:i-:dom  45 

So,  then,  our  New  England  fathers,  although  failing  here 
and  there  in  some  points  in  the  administration  of  religious 
liberty,  were  preeminent  for  the  time  in  which  they  lived, 
and,  at  the  bottom,  they  were  really  the  workmen  that 
brought  in  the  doctrine  of  religious  freedom,  because  they 
undertook  to  make  intelligent  men,  they  educated  men, 
they  tried  to  make  them  larger,  to  make  them  more  knowl- 
edgeable, to  make  them  able  to  stand  on  their  own  feet  with- 
out being  held  up  by  priests  or  by  any  other  preacher ;  and 
so,  working  to  make  larger  manhood  and  larger  liberty  in 
manhood,  they  tended  to  set  men  free  from  spiritual  just  as 
much  as  from  civil  domination.  I  regard  all  men  who  are 
working  toward  the  enlargement  of  their  fellowmen  as 
being  truly  guides  toward  emancipation  from  spiritual  des- 
potism. He  that  is  gone,  Agassiz,  was  also  a  priest  of  God 
— not  in  the  church  which  men's  hands  have  built,  but  in 
that  great  circle  which  Divine  Providence  marks  out,  where 
men  find  out  the  footsteps  and  the  handiwork  of  God,  and 
take  that  which  they  find  to  make  men  larger  and  richer  and 
truer  and  better.  He,  too,  is  a  priest  of  God  ;  and  that 
glorious  company  of  men  who  are  saying  to  the  rock  and  to 
the  sky  and  to  the  realms  of  nature,  "  What  secret  hath  God 
told  you  ?  Tell  it  to  us,"  they  too  are  making  men  free,  and 
are  emancipating  the  human  mind.  And  every  artist  who 
works  upon  his  canvas  or  upon  the  stone,  or  rears  up  stately 
fabrics,  expressing  something  nobler  to  men,  giving  some 
form  to  their  ideals  and  aspirations— every  such  man  also 
is  working  for  the  largeness  and  so  for  the  liberty  of  men. 
And  every  mother  who  sits  by  the  cradle,  singing  to  her 
babe  the  song  which  the  angels  sing  all  the  way  up  to  the 
very  throne,  she  too  is  God's  priestess,  and  is  working  for 
the  largeness  of  men,  and  so  for  their  liberty.  Whoever 
teaches  men  to  be  truthful,  to  be  virtuous,  to  be  enterpris- 
ing; in  short,  whoever  teaches  Manhood,  emancipates  men  ; 
for  liberty  means  not  license,  but  such  largeness  and  balance 
of  manhood  that  men  go  right,  not  because  they  are  told 
to,  but  because  they  love  that  which  is  right.  [Prolonged 
applause.] 


46  HENRY   WARD    BEECHER 


THE  GLORY  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

[Speech  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  at  the  second  anniversary  banquet  of 
the  New  England  Society  in  the  city  of  Brooklyn,  December  21,  1881.  The 
President  of  the  vSociet)^  Hon.  Benjamin  D.  Silliman,  presided  and  said 
by  way  of  introduction  :  "  Our  next  toast  is  in  a  few  words  :  '  New  Eng- 
land.' This  is  a  vast  theme — but  the  verj^  incarnalion  of  New  England 
is  with  us  to-night,  and  we  invoke  him  to  its  consideration.  It  is  our 
privilege  to  call  upon  the  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — There  is  no  other  con- 
test I  enjoy  beholding  so  much  as  to  hear  different  nations 
tell  which  of  them  has  been  foremost  in  the  contest  for 
liberty.  And  when  the  representatives  of  the  various  Eu- 
ropean nations  come  together,  I  like  to  see — I  like  to  hear — 
France  tell  what  she  has  done,  Germany  what  she  has  done, 
and  Holland  what  she  has  done.  And  it  gives  me  courage 
at  last  to  tell  a  little  of  what  New  England  has  done. 

The  age  in  which  Holland  showed  her  great  light,  was  an 
age  that  was  pouring  oil  into  more  lamps  than  hers  ;  one  in 
which  intellect  broke  at  last  and  began  to  lead,  seemingly, 
the  nations  toward  the  rising  of  the  sun.  And  if  you  look 
over  the  world  to-day,  there  is  scarcely  a  nation  of  Central 
Europe  not  stirred  by  this  resurrection  trump  to  the  in- 
tellect of  mankind.  What  .should  they  do  with  this  in- 
tellect? All  Europe  was  thralled.  Church  fetters,  and  so- 
cial fetters,  and  the  various  fetters  of  nobility  and  caste  held 
them  all. 

They  forged  the  arrows  of  light  on  the  anvils  of  Holland, 
and  France,  and  Germany,  but  there  was  no  bow  to  send 
the  arrows  home  ;  and  God  looked  all  around  to  see  what 
should  be  done  with  these  silver  arrows  that  were  being 
forged,  but  there  was  only  one  land  where  the  oaks  grew 
tough  enough  to  form  the  bow  to  send  the  arrow  home,  and 
that  was  old  England.  She  dominated  the  empires  of  the 
then  world,  as  America  does  to-day. 

I  boast  then — and  there  is  not  another  city  on  this  con- 
tinent where  it  is  more  fit  that  we  should  boast,  and  where 
their  honor  and  ours  is  combined,  where  the  Dutch  and  the 
Yankee  are  so  nearly  at  one,  as  this  very  City  of  Brooklyn, 
that  has  for  its  city  flag  the  sublimest  flag  known  on  the 


THE  GLORY  OF  NEW  ENGLAND        47 

face  of  the  globe — not  the  United  States  flag  which  is  barbaric 
only  by  the  flag  of  the  City  of  Brooklyn,  no  doublc-hcaclctl 
eagle,  no  twining  serpent,  simply  this  motto  and  symbol, 
"  Right  makes  might !  "  [Applause.]  And  with  such  a  flag 
as  that,  we  have  a  right  to  trace  the  history  of  these  men 
and  these  institutions  which  sprung  from  the  loins  of  no 
man,  but  from  the  Heart  and  Soul  of  Almighty  God. 

And  when  I  speak  of  the  Puritans,  I  know  perfectly  well 
that  they  were  not  theorists  ;  they  were  not  philosophers  ; 
they  never  sat  down  to  write  addresses.  They  had  but  just 
one  theory — that  every  man  before  God  was  a  man,  with  a 
right  to  himself  and  to  open  himself;  that  was  the  whole 
theory.  They  had  no  splendid  Utopian  idea  of  a  republic 
drawn  out,  they  had  no  Platonic  theory  of  life,  but  simply 
the  declaration,  "  I  am  a  man  because  Christ  is  in  me,  and  I 
have  a  right  to  everything  that  makes  manhood."  Contrast 
this  with  Prudhomme  and  Fourier  and  other  socialists  who 
eternally  sit,  and  who  eternally  never  lay  an  egg.  [Laughter.] 
They  had  simply  the  innate,  intense,  and  ineradicable 
sense  of  the  right  of  a  man  to  himself  before  God  and 
his  fellowmen.  And  in  that  spirit  they  came  to  New  Eng- 
land ;  not  to  build  air  castles  and  reform  political  theories. 
They  came  here  only  to  be  free  and  to  secure  to  all  their 
posterity  freedom  here.  And  out  of  that  simple  consider- 
ation of  the  inherent  dignity  of  man  as  a  child  of  God,  out 
of  that  grew  New  England.  They  sat  down  there  and 
opened  schoolhouses,  they  sat  down  in  New  England  and 
built  churches,  and  made  laws  that  should  suit  their  con- 
sciences and  the  rights  of  the  individual.  They  had  nosuch 
forecast  as  we  now  have  back-cast.  [Laughter.]  They  did 
not  anticipate  the  future  any  more  than  we  perfectly  read 
the  past,  but  out  of  that  little  leaven  grew  all  the  institutions 
of  New  England.  Taking  the  best  things  that  had  served 
old  England,  they  brought  out  such  as  served  them — that 
was  a  good  deal ;  such  as  did  not,  they  left  behind,  and  that 
was  a  good  deal  more.  You  call  them  "  State  builders." 
You  never  hit  it  more  perfectly  in  your  life.  Though  that 
was  not  their  trade,  yet,  like  the  universal  Yankee,  the)- 
could  turn  their  hand  to  almost  any  trade  when  the  time 
came.  They  scarcely,  like  the  Jews,  ever  separated  patriot- 
ism from  religion. 


48  HENRY   WARD    BEECHER 

Now  we  have  had  a  great  many  people  who  have  tried  to 
build  States.  A  good  many  tried  it  before  they  came. 
There  were  the  mound  builders.  No  doubt  the  mounds 
were  built  for  political  history,  but  the  mound  builders  are 
not  to  be  found.  There  were  the  Aztecs,  the  temple  build- 
ers of  Mexico,  with  an  astonishing  development  of  a  cer- 
tain civilization.  They  have  left  no  history,  nothing  but  a 
memory.  Then  the  Spanish  undertook  to  colonize,  and  they 
have  left  South  America  what  she  is.  The  French  under- 
took to  colonize,  and  as  they  were  when  they  landed  at 
Quebec,  so  they  are  to-day.  They  have  not  sprouted,  nor 
has  one  branch  grown  from  that  day  to  this.  They  went 
West  through  Indiana  and  Ohio,  and  it  is  perfectly  ludicrous 
to  hear  how  they  took  saws  and  cut  down  trees,  taking  four 
days  to  cut  down  one  good-sized  tree.  They  hacked  and 
hewed  all  day  and  fiddled  and  danced  all  night.  They  tried 
it  in  Florida  and  Louisiana.  All  the  nations  of  Europe, 
pretty  near,  tried  their  hand  at  it,  even  the  Dutch  at  New 
Amsterdam  ;  and  they  were  swallowed  up  at  one  mouthful. 
But  no  harm  came  of  it,  there  was  no  violence  done  them, 
for  there  was  no  resistance.  We  took  them,  married  their 
daughters,  and  so  subdued  them. 

There  is  only  one  nation  on  this  continent,  and  that  is 
New  England.  There  is  not  a  State  nor  a  Territory  whose 
constitution  to-day,  laid  alongside  the  New  England  con- 
stitution, varies  one-tenth  of  an  inch  from  its  fundamental 
principles.  Their  essential  laws,  their  constitutions,  are 
identical.  New  England  has  built  America.  You  may  like 
it  or  not  like  it,  there  are  the  facts.  And  we  are  not  here 
to  celebrate  New  England  in  any  sense  of  making  a  pro- 
vincial celebration.  Where  is  New  England  ?  Wherever 
New  Englanders  live,  from  the  Pacific  Ocean  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  ;  from  the  Northern  lakes  to  the  Mexican  Gulf.  We 
are  celebrating  the  whole  country.  We  are  the  grandfathers 
of  every  state  in  the  Union,  and  this  is  a  national  gathering, 
and  therefore  a  family  gathering. 

There  is  a  great  deal  more  important  question — Are  we 
going  to  maintain  what  our  fathers  received }  Are  the 
children  worthy  of  their  fathers  ?  I  say  they  are.  [Ap- 
plause.] You  and  I  will  leave  ourselves  all  out,  and  settle 
this  matter  impartially  [looking   at   Judge   Tracy  who  was 


TME    GLOKY    OF    NEW    ENdL.WI)  40 

present]  as  if  \vc  wcto  judges  upon  the  bench.  1  liold  that 
the  industry  of  New  England  has  not  gone  out,  except  to 
all  the  ends  of  the  earth.  The  old  settlers  of  New  England 
lived  on  rock  and  ground  granite,  and  really  committed  bur- 
glary on  nature  to  get  a  living  out  of  it.  You  don't  know 
anything  about  industry,  you  don't  know  even  as  much 
about  it  as  I  do  ;  for  I  used  to  get  up  at  four  o'clock  in  the 
morning  at  this  season  of  the  year  to  do  the  chores  and 
make  the  fires.  I  used  to  break  out  the  roads  with  the 
oxen  to  break  a  path  in  the  snow,  before  the  horses  coultl 
tread  the  path  they  broke.  I  used  to  go  two  miles  to 
school,  and  used  to  sit  on  Sundays  in  a  church  in  which 
they  thought  that  a  fire  was  a  sacrilege,  I  used  to  live 
where  the  old  fireplace  would  hold  logs  ten  feet  long,  which 
required  two  men  to  roll  them  in.  You  were  not  brought 
up  in  that  way  ;  I  was.  I  know  what  it  was  to  work.  Did 
you  ever  hoe  potatoes  on  a  hillside  just  after  the  alder 
bushes  had  been  cut  off?  [A  voice — "Yes,  sir!"]  I  am 
glad  there  is  one  real  Yankee  here.     [Laughter.]     I  have. 

Did  you  ever  have  but  one  single  holiday  in  all  the  sum- 
mer's vacation,  and  that  the  4th  of  July?  I  have.  Were 
you  ever  shut  up  in  your  door-yard  and  not  allowed  to  go 
down  town  to  see  the  training  ?  I  was.  One  of  the  great 
sorrows  of  my  life,  that  never  can  be  lifted  from  me,  was  to 
hear  the  bass  drum  down  in  the  village,  and  have  a  father 
who  was  so  solicitous  for  the  morals  of  his  son,  that  he 
would  not  allow  him  to  go  out  of  the  yard  to  see  the  sol- 
diers train  !  [Laughter.]  We  have  two  sons  of  New  Eng- 
land here  that  know  more  about  soldiering,  but  then  they 
have  descended  a  good  way. 

The  industry  of  New  England  has  not  ceased,  AH  the 
most  fertile  enterprises  on  this  continent,  and  almost  all 
that  exist  in  every  part  of  the  globe  have  in  them  either  the 
capital  or  management  of  New  England  men,  and  the  com- 
mercial and  manufacturing  interest  of  this  continent  reflect 
honor  on  the  posterity  of  the  Puritans  and  the  Pilgrims. 

When  it  was  sought  to  inaugurate  a  dynasty  and  an 
aristocracy,  and  make  slavery  essentially  the  master  of  this 
country,  it  was  the  spirit  of  New  England  that  resisted  that 
despotism  and  that  tyranny.  And  so  was  it  recognized, 
that  it  was  actually  in  the  council  of   Southern  men  to  dis- 


50  HENRY   WARD    BEECHER 

solve  the  Union  and  re-compose  it,  leaving  New  England 
out.  A  greater  honor  never  was  conferred  upon  New  Eng- 
land than  that.  When  the  war  broke  out — I  shall  leave  my 
friend  on  the  left  to  speak  of  that — when  our  very  best  men 
in  every  walk  in  life  answered  their  country's  call,  the  first 
soldier  that  went  through  here  was  a  son  of  New  England. 

There  was  one  remarkable  incident  that  happened  in  Bal- 
timore, that  I  recall :  When  the  Massachusetts  Sixth  was 
there  and  being  mobbed,  and  stood  for  a  long  time  per- 
fcctl}^  patient  till  their  officers  commanded  them  to  fire,  a 
long  Yankee — who  had  stood  watching  this  crowd  and  saw 
that  the  poor  rufifians  round  about  were  merely  the  tools  of 
the  respectable  scoundrels  standing  away  across  the  square 
on  boxes  and  barrels — stepped  out  from  the  ranks  and  drew 
his  bead  and  sent  a  bullet  through  one  scoundrel's  heart, 
and  knocked  him  like  a  pigeon  off  a  branch.  In  Baltimore 
1  heard  the  other  side  of  that  story,  when  a  clergyman  of 
that  city  told  me,  "  We  lost  a  good  deal  out  of  our  church 
that  day."  "Ah?"  said  I,  "How  was  that?"  "Well, 
one  of  the  class  leaders  of  our  church  was  down  there  look- 
ing on.  He  stood  on  a  box  on  the  other  side  of  the  square  ; 
he  was  not  amongst  the  crowd  at  all,  but  a  stray  bullet  came 
across  the  end  of  the  square  and  shot  him  !  "  [Laughter.] 
He  was  one  of  those  broadclothed  scoundrels,  with  a  gold 
headed  cane,  surrounding  those  poor  fellows,  and  ought  to 
have  been  shot. 

Afterward  there  came  up  the  question  of  Repudiation, 
and  the  spirit  of  New  England  rose  against  it  and  put  that 
down  as  a  fatal  heresy  all  over  the  country. 

And  when  the  question  of  the  redemption  of  the  currency 
came  up,  the  New  England  conscience  and  spirit  showed 
itself  again,  and  that  question  has  been  fortunately  settled 
for  honesty  and  for  good  morals.  When  the  New  England 
spirit  is  rife  in  any  community,  it  respects  the  law,  it  re- 
spects government,  it  respects  parties.  But  there  is  that 
same  plucky  personal  independence,  and  when  the  man- 
agers of  parties  forget  that  they  are  the  servants  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  decree  that  the  people  shall  do  as  they  want  to  have 
them  do,  instead  of  their  doing  what  the  people  want  to 
have  them  do,  the  old  New  England  pluck  rises  up  against 
it,  and  they  "  bust   the  machine,"  and   elect   to  the  magis- 


TRIBUTE    TO    HARRIET    nElCCIIER    STOWE  51 

tracy  of  every  city  where  this  takes  place,  the  man  who  ex- 
presses the  will  of  the  people.  I  think  we  may  say  therefore 
that  the  spirit  of  libcrt\%  essential  in  Religion  and  in  Phil- 
osophy, the  spirit  (jf  civil  government,  the  spirit  of  enter- 
prise, inhere  in  the  posterity  of  New  England  ;  that  we 
have  come  into  a  larger  place,  and  that  we  are  carrying  on 
the  great  work  inangurated  by  our  fathers,  on  a  continent 
and  not  in  a  province.  I  think  we  may  say  that  the  glory 
of  New  England  is  not  alone  in  the  institutions  that  they 
founded  and  gave  to  the  continent,  but  her  glory  is  also  in 
that  posterity  which  has  descended  from  them,  and  which  is 
thoroughbred,  and  that  carried  with  it  the  heart,  the  con- 
science, the  will  and  the  power  of  the  fathers  of  New  Eng- 
land.    [Prolonged  applause.] 


TRIBUTE  TO  HARRIET  BEECHER  STOWE 

[Address  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  *  at  the  festival  given  by  Messrs. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Company  at  Newtonville,  Mass.,  June  14,  1S82,  the 
birthday  anniversary  of  Harriet  Eeeclier  Stowe.  This  festival  was  one 
of  a  series  given  by  the  same  firm  to  several  of  the  distinguished  authors 
whose  works  they  published.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  William  Claflin  tendered 
their  spacious  and  Ijeautiful  comitry  home  and  grounds  for  this  occasion, 
and  the  festival  took  the  form  of  a  garden  party.  It  was  attended  by 
about  two  hundred  guests,  among  whom  were  persons  eminent  in  letters, 
art,  science,  statesmanship,  and  philanthropy.  As  the  guests  arrived 
they  were  presented  to  Mrs.  Stowe  by  Mr.  H.  O.  Houghton,  and  after 
two  hours  had  been  spent  in  social  converse,  the  company  gathered  in  a 
tent  on  the  lawn  where  Mr.  Houghton,  after  an  introductory  address,  pre- 
sented Mr.  Beecher.] 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — I  don't  know  whether  it  is 
in  good  taste  for  any  other  member  of  my  father's  family 
to  join  in  the  laudation  of  Mrs.  Stowe,  but  if  it  is,  I  am  a 
very  proper  one  to  do  it.  I  know  that  for  a  long  time  after 
the  publication  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  there  were  a  great 
many  very  wise  people  who  said  they  knew  that  she  never 
wrote  it  herself,  but  that  I  did  it.  The  matter  at  last  be- 
came so  scandalous  that  I   determined  to  put  an  end  to  it, 

*  This  speech  was  originally  published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  is 
used  by  permission  of  Ploughton,  INIifflin  6c  Co.,  of  Boston,  Mass. 


52  HENRY   WARD    RRECHE^R 

and  therefore  I  wrote  "  Norwood."  That  killed  the  thing 
dead. 

I  will  admit  that  I  had  something  to  do  with "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin."  I  recollect  that  Mrs.  Stowe  asked  me  one 
day  whether  I  took  "  The  National  Era."  I  said  No;  but  I 
would,  if  necessary.  What  was  going  to  happen  ?  She 
said  that  Dr.  Bailey  had  sent  her  some  money  to  write  a 
story  for  that  paper,  as  far  as  that  money  would  go  ;  that 
it  would  run  through  three  or  four  numbers,  for  when  she 
first  planned  Uncle  Tom  she  thought  it  would  probably 
extend  through  three  or  four  issues  of  the  paper.  When, 
in  the  progress  of  the  publication,  people  became  very  much 
excited,  and  it  was  resolved  to  publish  the  story  in  a  vol- 
ume, she  was  still  writing  it,  and  John  P.  Jewett,  who  was 
to  be  the  publisher,  said  that  the  book  must  be  limited  to 
one  octavo  volume.  Such  was  the  low  estate  of  anti-slavery 
literature  that  it  was  not  believed  an  anti-slavery  book  of 
more  than  one  volume  would  find  readers.  I  thought  so 
and  wrote  a  most  persuasive  letter  to  her  to  kill  off  Uncle 
Tom  quickly,  and  to  give  the  world  the  book  in  one  volume, 
if  she  expected  it  to  be  read.  What  became  of  that  letter  I 
don't  know,  and  perhaps  she  cannot  recollect  ;  but,  with  a 
peculiarity  which  belongs  to  no  other  member  of  my  father's 
family,  she  had  her  own  way  about  it. 

Now,  I  think  we  might  have  a  good  experience  meeting 
here  this  afternoon,  if  every  one  would  tell  under  what  cir- 
cumstances he  read  the  book,  and  how  he  acted.  I  can  still 
remember  plainly  the  circumstances  under  which  I  finished 
it.  I  had  got  well  into  the  second  volume.  It  was  Thurs- 
day. Sunday  was  looming  up  before  me,  and  at  the  rate  at 
which  I  was  going  there  would  not  be  time  to  finish  it  be- 
fore Sunday,  and  I  could  never  preach  till  I  had  finished  it. 
So  I  set  myself  to  it  and  determined  to  finish  it  at  once.  I 
had  got  a  considerable  way  into  the  second  volume,  and  I 
recommended  my  wife  to  go  to  bed.  I  didn't  want  any- 
body down  there.  I  soon  began  to  cry.  Then  I  went  and 
shut  all  the  doors,  for  I  did  not  want  any  one  to  see  me. 
Then  I  sat  down  to  it  and  finished  it  that  night,  for  I  knew 
that  only  in  that  way  should  I  be  able  to  preach  on  Sunday. 
I  know  that  many  of  you  must  have  read  it  something  as  I 
did  at  that  time. 


TRIBUTE    TO    IIAKRIKT    BKI'XIIIIR    STOWi;  53 

I  am  in  sympathy  with  you  in  your  rejoicing  this  after- 
noon, and  thank  you  for  your  courtesy  shown  to  my  sister 
and  your  sister,  for  she  has  won  that  place  in  the  licarts  of 
many.      I  leave  the  gratulations  to  you. 

Professor  Guyot,  of  Princeton,  says  that  progress  in  the 
world  is  like  the  development  of  plant  life.  It  has  three 
periods  of  growth.  The  first  is  that  in  the  soil, — growth  by 
the  root.  The  second  is  more  accelerated, — growth  by  the 
stem.  The  third  is  the  most  rapid  of  all, — growth  by 
the  blossom  and  fruit.  The  world  has  been  growing  by 
the  root,  obscurely,  lingeringly,  slowly.  It  is  growing  by  the 
stem  now,  very  much  faster.  It  is  beginning  to  break  into 
the  blossom  and  fruit,  when  progress  will  be  wonderful 
compared  with  our  past  experience  in  all  other  periods. 
Other  years  have  seen  great  changes,  but  men  in  this  gen- 
eration have  seen  changes  begin  and  have  seen  their  ripening 
fruit.  We  are  now  living  in  that  period  of  the  world  in 
which  you  have  a  long  time  of  former  life  compressed,  and 
men  may  see  the  beginning  and  end  of  a  great  movement. 
I  have  always  been  glad  that  that  noble  man,  Mr.  Garrison, 
lived  to  see  the  chains  broken  and  the  slaves  go  free.  It 
took  only  the  golden  middle  part  of  his  life  to  see  the  be- 
ginning and  the  end,  Mrs.  Stowe,  when  a  wife  and  mother, 
established  in  life,  began  her  part  of  this  great  work.  She 
yet  numbers  her  years  here,  and  their  blossom  is  on  her 
head.  It  lingers  long,  and  long  may  it  linger  before  it  falls. 
She  saw  slavery  intrenched  in  all  the  power  of  politics,  in  all 
the  power  of  government,  in  all  thepower  of  commerce,  and 
with  the  benediction  of  a  sham  religion,  at  the  time  in  which 
she  entered  upon  this  career.  And,  behold,  where  is  it  to- 
day ?  It  is  in  history  only.  Upon  that  black  cloud  which 
rested  over  all  the  land  has  risen  the  Sun  of  righteousness. 
In  a  short  period  have  occurred  these  great  changes,  in 
ways  that  no  man  would  have  predicted,  no  man  would 
have  broug-ht  about.     It  is  God  who  has  done  it. 

Of  course  you  all  sympathize  with  me  to-day,  but,  stand- 
ing in  this  place,  I  do  not  see  your  faces  more  clearly  than 
I  see  those  of  my  father  and  my  mother.  Her  I  only  knew 
as  a  mere  babe-child.  He  was  my  teacher  and  my  com- 
panion. A  more  guileless  soul  than  he,  a  more  honest  one, 
more  free  from  envy,  from  jealousy,  and  from  selfishness,  I 


54  HENRY   WARD    BEECHER 

never  knew.  Though  he  thought  he  was  great  by  his 
theology,  everybody  else  knew  he  was  great  by  his  religion. 
My  mother  is  to  me  what  the  Virgin  Mary  is  to  a  devout 
Catholic.  She  was  a  woman  of  great  nature,  profound  as  a 
philosophical  thinker,  great  in  argument,  with  a  kind  of 
intellectual  imagination,  diffident,  not  talkative, — in  that 
respect  I  take  after  her, — a  woman  who  gave  birth  to  Mrs. 
Stowe,  whose  graces  and  excellencies  she  probably  more 
than  any  other  of  her  children — we  number  but  thirteen — 
has  possessed.  I  suppose  that  in  bodily  resemblance,  per- 
haps, she  is  not  like  my  mother,  but  in  mind  I  presume  she 
is  most  like  her. 

I  thank  you  for  my  father's  sake  and  for  my  mother's 
sake  for  the  courtesy,  the  friendliness,  and  the  kindness 
which  you  give  to  Mrs.  Stowe. 


MERCHANTS  AND  MINISTERS 

[Speech  of  Henry  Ward  Beeclier,  delivered  in  New  York  City,  May 
8,  1SS3,  at  the  115th  annual  banquet  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of 
the  State  of  New  Y^ork.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  Merchants: — It 
may  seem  a  little  strange  that,  in  one  toast,  two  so  very 
dissimilar  professions  should  be  associated.  I  suppose 
it  is  partly  because  one  preaches  and  the  other  practises. 
[Laughter.]  There  are  very  many  functions  that  are  per- 
formed in  common.  Merchants  are  usually  men  forehanded  ; 
ministers  are  generally  men  empty-handed.  [Laughter.] 
Merchants  form  important  pillars  in  the  structure  of  the 
Church.  Ministers  are  appointed  often  to  go  forth  to 
councils  and  associations,  and  a  delegate  is  always  sent  with 
them.  The  object  of  the  delegate  is  to  keep  the  minister 
sober  and  to  pay  his  expenses.  [Laughter.]  They  are  a 
very  useful  set  of  men  in  the  Church.  [Laughter.]  But 
there  are  some  moral  functions  that  they  have  in  common. 
It  is  the  business  of  the  minister  to  preach  the  truth.  It  is 
the  interest  of  the  merchant  to  practise  it.  I  hold  that  not 
even  the  Church  itself  is  more  dependent  upon  fundamental 


MERCHANTS    AND    MINISTERS  55 

moralities  than  is  the   whole  commercial   structure  of  the 
world.     [Cries  of  "  That's  so  !  "J 

There  arc  three  great  elements  that  arc  fundamental 
elements.  Tliey  are  the  same  everywhere — among  all 
people  and  in  every  business — truth,  honesty  and  fidelity, 
[Applause.]  And  it  is  my  mission  to-night  to  say  that,  to 
a  very  large  extent,  I  fear  the  pulpit  has  somewhat  forgotten 
to  make  this  the  staple  of  preaching.  It  has  been  given  too 
largely,  recently,  from  the  force  of  education  and  philosophical 
research,  to  discourse  upon  what  are  considered  the  "  higiier  " 
topics  —  theology  —  against  which  I  bring  no  charge. 
[Laughter.]  But  theology  itself,  that  is  not  based  on  the 
profoundest  morality,  is  an  empty  cloud  that  sails  through 
the  summer  air,  leaving  as  much  drought  as  it  found.  I 
believe  that  there  is  a  theology  that  pertains  to  the  higher 
experiences  of  the  human  soul.  As  profoundly  as  any  man, 
I  believe  in  that. 

To-day,  I  have  been  transplanting  magnolia  trees.  I  am 
speaking  to-night  as  the  farmer  of  Westchester  County. 
[Laughter.]  There  is  one  that  stands  among  the  earliest 
I  planted,  twenty  years  ago,  and  now  it  is  a  vast  ball  of 
white.  I  suppose  five  hundred  thousand  magnificent  cups 
are  exhaling  thanksgiving  to  God  after  the  long  winter  has 
passed.  Now,  no  man  need  tell  me  that  the  root  that  nestles 
in  the  ground  is  as  handsome  or  smells  as  sweet  as  these 
vases  in  the  air  ;  but  I  should  like  to  know  what  would  be- 
come of  all  these  white  cups  in  the  air,  if  the  connection 
between  those  dirt-covered  roots  and  the  blossoms  should 
be  cut  to-night.  The  root  is  the  prime  provider,  and  there 
can  be  no  life  and  no  blossom  where  there  is  no  root  con- 
nection. 

Theology  and  all  the  rhetoric  of  preaching  is  well  enough 
in  its  place,  provided  there  is  a  clean  and  clear  passage  from 
all  beauty,  and  all  speculations,  and  all  doctrine,  down  to 
fundamental,  common,  practical  moralities  without  doubt. 
[Applause.]  I  hold,  then,  that  it  is  the  interest  both  of  the 
Church  and  the  Store  to  see  to  it  that  truth  is  spoken,  and 
that  honesty  and  equity  prevail  between  man  and  man, 
nation  and  nation,  people  and  people,  and  that  men  .should 
be  worthy  of  trust  all  over  the  Avorld.     [Applause.] 

Speaking  the   truth   is  an  artificial  matter.     [Laughter.] 


56  HENRY   WARD    BEECHER 

Men  are  no  more  born  to  speak  the  Cruth  than  they  are  to 
fire  rifles,  and,  indeed,  it  is  a  good  dea.  like  that.  It  is  only 
now  and  then  that  a  man  can  hit  the  bull's-eye,  and  a 
great  many  can't  hit  the  target  at  all.  [Laughter.]  Speak- 
ing the  truth  requires  that  a  man  should  know  a  little  about 
what  is  truth.  It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  be  a  true  man. 
We  part  with  our  fancies  and  call  them  truth.  We  part 
with  our  interests  and  call  them  truth.  We  part  with  our 
consciences,  more  often,  and  call  that  truth.      [Laughter.] 

The  reason  why  these  are  fundamental  moralities,  and 
why  they  are  so  important  to  the  commercial  interests  of 
men  is  this:  commerce  dies  the  moment,  and  is  sick  in  the 
degree  in  which  men  cannot  trust  each  other.  [Applause.] 
That  is  the  case  in  the  smallest  community,  and  it  is  more 
marked,  the  greater  the  magnitude  of  commercial  enter- 
prises. And  it  is  one  of  the  evidences  that  things  are  not 
so  far  gone  as  some  would  have  us  suppose,  that  men  are 
willing  to  trust  each  other  so  largely  in  all  parts  of  the 
earth.  If  a  man  can  invest  his  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
dollars  on  the  ocean  or  in  distant  countries,  where  men  can- 
not understand  the  documents  Vv'e  write,  it  shows  that  there 
is  trust  between  man  and  man,  buyers  and  sellers  :  and  if 
there  is  trust  between  them  it  is  because  experience  has 
created  the  probabilities  of  truthfulness  in  the  actions  of 
men  and  all  the  concordant  circumstances.  If  men  did  not 
believe  in  the  truth  of  men,  they  never  would  send  to  China, 
Japan  or  Mexico  their  great  properties  and  interests,  with 
no  other  guarantee  than  that  the  men  are  trustworthy. 
The  shipmaster  must  be  trustworthy,  the  officers  of  the 
government  must  be  trustworthy,  and  that  business  goes 
on  and  increases  the  world  over  is  a  silent  testimony  that, 
bad  as  men  do  lie,  they  do  not  lie  bad  enough  to  separate 
man  from  man.     [Laughter.] 

Now,  I  wish  to  call  your  attention  to  one  unpleasant 
state  of  affairs.  It  is  not  to  me  so  very  surprising  that  men 
intrusted  with  large  interests  are  found  to  be  so  breakable. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  make-up  of  a  president  that  should 
cause  him  to  make  off  with  the  funds  committed  to  his 
management.  There  is  nothing  in  being  a  cashier  or  director 
that  ought  to  rot  out  a  man  so  that  he  snaps  under  tempta- 
tion.     I   admit   that   all  men   are  breakable.      Men  are  like 


MERCHANTS   AND    MINISTERS  57 

timber.  Oak  will  bear  a  stress  that  pine  won't,  but  there 
never  was  a  stick  of  timber  on  the  earth  that  could  not  be 
broken  at  some  pressure.  There  never  was  a  man  born  on 
the  earth  that  could  not  be  broken  at  some  pressure — not 
always  the  same  nor  put  in  the  same  place.  There  is  many 
a  man  who  cannot  be  broken  by  money  pressure,  but  who 
can  be  by  pressure  of  flattery.  There  is  many  a  man  im- 
pervious to  flattery  who  is  warped  and  biased  by  his  social 
inclinations.  There  is  many  a  man  whom  you  cannot  tcmjjt 
with  red  gold,  but  you  can  with  dinners  and  convivialities. 
One  way  or  the  other,  every  man  is  vincible.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  meaning  in  that  simple  portion  of  the  Lord's 
prayer,  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation." 

No  man  knows  what  he  will  do,  according  to  the  nature  of 
the  temptation  as  adapted  to  the  peculiar  weakness  of  his 
constitution.  But  this  is  that  which  is  peculiar — that  it 
requires  piety  to  be  a  rascal.  [Laughter.]  It  would  almost 
seem  as  if  a  man  had  to  serve  as  a  superintendent  of  a  Sun- 
day School  as  a  passport  to  Sing  Sing.  [Laughter.]  How 
is  it  that  pious  men  are  defrauding  their  wards?  That  lead- 
ing men  in  the  Church  arc  running  oE  with  one  hundred 
thousand  or  two  hundred  thousand  dollars?  In  other 
words,  it  would  seem  as  if  religion  were  sim[)ly  a  cloak  for 
rascality  and  villainy.  It  is  time  for  merchants  and 
ministers  to  stand  together  and  take  counsel  on  that  sub- 
ject. I  say  the  time  has  come  when  wc  have  got  to  go 
back  to  old-fashioned,  plain  talk  in  our  pulpits  on  the  sub- 
ject of  common  moralit)-,  until  men  shall  think  not  so  much 
about  Adam  as  about  his  posterity  [applause],  not  so 
much  about  the  higher  themes  of  theology,  which  are  re- 
garded too  often  as  being  the  test  of  men's  ability  and  the 
orthodoxy  and  salvability  of  churches. 

Well,  gentlemen,  in  regard  to  what  men  think  in  the  vast 
realm  of  theology,  where  nobody  knows  anything  about  it, 
does  not  make  any  difference.  [Laughter.]  A  man  may 
speak  and  be  lying,  and  not  know  it,  when  he  had  got  up 
overhead  in  the  clouds.  But  on  the  ground,  where  man 
meets  man,  where  interests  meet  interests,  where  temptation 
pursues  every  man,  where  earthly  considerations — greed- 
iness, selfishness,  pride,  all  influencesare  working  together — 
we  need  to  have  every  man,  once  a  week  at  any  rate,  in  the 


58  HENRY   WARD    REECHER 

church,  and  every  day  at  home,  cautioned  on  the  subject  of 
the  simple  virtues  of  truth  and  honesty  and  fidelity  ;  and  a 
man  that  is,  in  these  three  respects,  thoroughly  educated, 
and  education  has  trained  him  so  that  he  is  invincible  to  all 
the  other  temptations  of  life,  has  come  not  necessarily  to  be 
a  perfect  man,  because  he  is  ignorant  of  all  theology  ;  but 
I  say  that,  over  all  the  theories  of  theology,  I  think  that 
education  will  lead  more  men  to  heaven  than  any  high 
Church  theology,  or  any  other  kind  that  leaves  that  out. 
[Applause.] 

What,  then,  are  we  going  to  do  ?  It  seems  to  me  there 
are  three  things  that  must  be  done.  In  the  first  place,  the 
household  must  do  its  work.  The  things  that  we  learn  from 
our  fathers  and  mothers  we  never  forget,  by  whichever  end 
they  enter.  [Laughter.]  They  become  incorporated  into 
our  being,  and  become  almost  instincts,  apparently.  If  we 
have  learned  at  home  to  love  and  honor  the  truth,  until  we 
come  to  hate,  as  men  hate  filth,  all  lying,  all  double-tongued 
business — if  we  get  that  firmly  ingrained,  we  shall  probably 
carry  that  feeling  to  the  end  of  life — and  it  is  the  most  pre- 
cious thread  of  life — provided  we  keep  out  of  politics. 
[Laughter.] 

Next,  it  seems  to  me  that  this  doctrine  of  truth,  equity 
and  fidelity  must  form  a  much  larger  part  and  a  much  more 
instructive  part  of  the  ministrations  of  the  Church  than  it 
does  to-day.  Wonder  is  a  great  many  times  expressed  why 
the  churches  are  so  thin,  why  men  do  not  go  to  meeting. 
The. churches  are  always  popular  when  people  hear  some- 
thing there  that  they  want  to  hear — when  they  receive  that 
which  gives  them  light,  and  food  for  thought,  and  incite- 
ment in  all  the  legitimate  ways  of  life.  There  they  will  go 
again  and  again.  And  if  churches  are  supported  on  any 
other  ground,  they  are  illegitimate.  The  Church  should 
feed  the  hungry  soul.  When  men  arc  hungry  and  get  what 
they  need,  they  go  every  day  to  get  such  food  as  that. 
[Applause.] 

Next,  there  must  be  a  public  sentiment  amoiig  all  honor- 
able merchants  which  shall  frown,  without  fear  or  favor, 
upon  all  obliquity,  upon  everything  in  commerce,  at  home 
or  abroad,  that  is  violative  of  truth,  equity  and  fidelity. 
[Applause.]     These  three  qualities  are  indispensable  to  the 


MERCHANTS    AND    MINISTERS  50 

prosperity  of  commerce.  With  them,  with  the  stimuhis, 
enterprise,  opportunities  and  means  that  we  have  in  our 
hands,  America  can  carry  the  world.  [Applause.]  But 
without  them,  without  these  commercial  under-strata  in  the 
commerce  of  America,  wc  shall  do  just  as  foolishly  as  other 
people  liave  done,  and  shall  come  to  the  same  disasters  in 
the  long  run  as  they  have  come  to.     [Applause.] 

So,  then,  gentlemen,  this  toast,  "  Ministers  and  Mer- 
chants," is  not  so  strange  a  combination  after  all.  You  are 
the  merchants  and  I  am  the  minister,  and  I  have  preached 
to  you  and  you  have  sat  still  and  heard  the  whole  of  it  ; 
and  with  this  simple  testimony,  with  this  foundation  laid 
before  you  for  your  future  prosperity,  I  have  only  to  say,  if 
you  have  been  accustomed  to  do  what  the  Mosaic  law 
wisely  forbids,  you  must  not  twine  the  hemp  and  the  wool 
to  make  a  thread  under  the  Mosaic  economy.  You,  mer- 
chants, must  not  twine  lies  and  sagacity  with  your  threads 
in  weaving,  for  every  lie  that  is  told  in  business  is  a  rotten 
thread  in  the  fabric,  and  though  it  may  look  well  when  it  first 
comes  out  of  the  loom,  there  will  always  be  a  hole  there, 
first  or  last,  when  you  come  to  wear  it.  [Applause.]  No 
gloss  in  dressing,  no  finishing  in  bargainor  goods,  no  lie,  if 
it  be  an  organic  lie,  no  lie  that  runs  through  whole  trades  or 
whole  departments,  has  any  sanity,  safety  or  salvation  in  it. 
A  lie  is  bad  from  top  to  bottom,  from  beginning  to  end,  and 
so  is  cheating — except  in  umbrellas,  slate-i)encils  and  such 
things.  [Laughter.]  There  is  a  little  line  drawn  before  you 
come  quite  up  to  the  dead  line  of  actual  transgression. 
[Laughter.]  When  a  young  man  swears  he  will  teach  a 
whole  system  of  doctrines  faithfully;  no  one  supposes  he 
means  it,  but  he  is  excused  because  everybody  knows  that 
he  does  not  know  what  he  is  saying,  and  doesn't  under- 
stand. Of  course,  there  is  the  lying  of  permission,  as  when 
a  lawyer  says  to  a  jury,  in  a  bad  case  :  "On  my  soul,  gentle- 
men of  the  jury,  I  believe  my  client  to  be  an  injured  man." 
We  know  he  is  lying;  he  knows  it,  and  the  jury  know  it, 
and  so  it  is  not  lying  at  all,  really.  [Laughter.]  And 
even  when  engineers  make  one  estimate  [glancing 
humorously    in    the    direction    of    the    gentleman  *     who 

*  Hon.  James  S.  T.  Stranalian  who  had  responded  to  the  toast :  "The  Great 
Bridge — the  engmeering  trinniph  of  the  nhieteenth  century." 


6o  HENRY    WARD    BEECHER 

had  eulogized  the  bridge  management] — but  we  pay  up 
another  bill.  [Prolonged  laughter.]  Leaving  out  these 
matters,  lies  of  courtesy,  lies  of  ignorance,  professional  lies, 
lawyers'  lies,  thelogians'  lies — and  they  are  good  men 
[laughter] — I  come  to  common,  vulgar  lies,  calico  lies, 
broadcloth  lies,  cotton  lies,  silk  lies,  and  those  most  vermi- 
nous and  multitudinous  lies  of  grocers.  [Roars  of  laughter.] 
Gentlemen,  I  have  been  requested  to  say  a  word  or  two 
on  monopoly.  I  wish,  on  my  soul,  th(;re  were  a  few  men 
who  had  the  monopoly  of  lying,  and  that  they  had  it  all  to 
themselves.  [Applause.]  And  now  I  go  back  to  my  first 
statement.  The  Church  and  tlie  Store  have  a  common  bus- 
iness before  them,  to  lay  the  foundation  of  sound  morality, 
as  a  ground  of  temporal  prosperity,  to  say  nothing  of  any 
otiier  direction.  The  minister  and  the  merchant  have  a 
like  interest.  The  minister  forthe  sake  of  God  and  human- 
ity, and  the  merchant  for  his  own  sake,  to  see  to  it  that, 
more  and  more,  in  public  sentiment,  even  in  newspapers — . 
which  are  perhaps  as  free  as  any  other  organs  of  life  from 
bias  and  mistake  [laughter] — lying  shall  be  placed  in  the 
category  of  vermin.  [Applause.]  And  so,  with  my  bene- 
diction, gentlemen,  I  will  leave  you  to  meditate  on  this 
important  topic.     [vVpplause.] 


HOME  RULE  FOR  IRELAND 

[Speech  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  at  the  I02d  aaniversary  dinner  of  the 
Friendly  Sons  of  St.  Patrick,  New  York  City,  March  17,  1886.  Joseph  J. 
O'Donoghue,  President  of  the  vSociety,  was  in  the  chair,  and  proposed  the 
toast  "  Ireland, "  to  which  Mr.  Beecher  spoke.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — There  is  a  great  deal 
more  in  this  struggle  in  Ireland  than  lies  on  the  face  of  it. 
She  is  small  in  territory,  but  large  in  men  and  brains,  and 
Ireland  to-day  happens  to  be  the  object  of  universal  at- 
tention. She  stands  more  nearly  at  the  front  than  other 
European  nations.  The  human  race  is  not  forever  to  be 
trodden  down.  Universal  intelligence  is  drawing  near. 
The  nations  are  closer  together.  Nothing  can  any  longer 
be    done   in  a  corner.     The  whole  human  family  are  under 


HOME    RULE    FOR    IRELAND  6t 

the  influence  of  its  most  cnliglitened  part.  The  wliole  of 
society  is  lifted  when  any  part  of  it  is  aroused.  All  over 
the  world  men  have  heard  (iod's  trumpet.  The  mass  of 
men  at  the  bottom  are  coming;"  up  ;  they  are  going  to  make 
room  for  themselves.  All  the  nations  in  Europe  are  feeling 
the  throes  which  come  from  the  rising  of  the  under 
classes  of  men.  [  Ai)plause.]  A  democratic  representative 
race  is  working  in  all  the  nations  of  Europe.  I  do  not 
blame  the  Nihilist.  Oppression  will  drive  men  mad. 
But  we  know  how  to  make  States  that  will  stand,  and  not 
merely  stand  still,  but  that  will  radiate,  vitalize  and  il- 
luminate the  world.  Liberty  is  catching ;  the  nations  of 
Europe  have  caught  it,  and  we  are  bound  to  take  an  interest 
in  the  fruit  of  our  hands. 

Imperial  Great  liritain  ought  to  give  Home  Rule  to 
Ireland.  God  forljid  that  I  shoidd  say  aught  irreverential 
of  Great  Britain.  Her  spirit  has  given  more  liberty  to  us 
than  she  has  retained  herself.  There  can  never  be  a  transfer 
of  American  institutions  to  Great  Britain.,  unless  there  is  a 
corresponding  change  in  the  make-up  of  Great  Britain  itself. 
I  believe  that  Ireland  will  attain  a  step  in  advance,  but  it 
will  be  only  preparatory  to  another  step.  Great  Britain  is 
not  to  be  exempted  from  the  change  that  is  to  overtake  all 
nations;  monarchy  and  democracy  cannot  exist  together, 
[y\pplausc.]  With  I'arnell  and  Gladstone,  I  believe  that 
Ireland  will  attain  an  improved  condition,  but  it  does  not 
become  Irishmen  to  tread  under  foot  those,  who  like  them- 
selves, come  here  to  make  a  living.  Chir,  men  are  chil- 
dren  of  God  also.  From  the  East,  I  believe,  is  to  come 
a  civilization  that  will  yet  make  the  nations  of  Europe 
tremble.  Ireland  is  not  the  only  aspirant  forlibert)-.  May 
the  day  come  quickly  when  Great  Britain  will  discover  that 
Irishmen  are  her  stanchcst  friends,  and  when  Irishmen  will 
learn  that  Englishmen  are  their  brothers.     [Applause. J 


62  HENRY   WARD    REECHER 


TRIBUTE    TO     IMUNKACSY 

[Speech  of  Henry  Ward  I'eecher  at  a  banquet  given  in  honor  of  Mihaly 
Munkacsy,  by  a  number  of  Hungarians  of  New  York  City.November  23,  18S6. 
Joseph  PuHtzer,  of  the  New  York  "  World,"  presided.  Previous  to  the  speech 
(jf  Mr.  Beeclier,  M.  Munkacsy  spoke  a  few  words  in  Frencli,  wliicli  were  in- 
terpreted by  Carl  Schurz  as  follows  :  "  M.  Munkacsy  tells  me  that  if  he  could 
appreciate  the  language  as  readily  as  he  can  appreciate  the  terrapin  and  canvas- 
back  duck, he  would  speak  to  you  himself.  [Laughter.]  He  has  found  here  a 
development  of  the  knowledge  and  the  appreciation  of  art  which  has  greatly 
surprised  him.  He  tells  me,  too,  that  what  has  struck  him  most  forcibly  is  the 
fact  that  when  the  future  historian  of  art  undertakes  to  set  forth  the  progress 
of  art  in  this  century,  he  will  have  to  look  not  to  the  progress  of  art  in  Europe 
but  in  America."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen: — I  am  very- 
happy  to  be  here  this  evcninp^  to  join  with  you  in  the 
appreciation  of  a  distinguished  stranger — that  was,  but  is 
never  to  be  again — known  all  over  the  world,  but  only  to  a 
few  in  this  land.  Hereafter  we  shall  consider  him,  if  not 
an  American  citizen,  yet  a  citizen  of  America  by  a  higher 
tie  than  any  political  tic.  lie  is  a  citizen  of  the  world. 
He  belongs  to  every  nation  that  has  any  appreciation  of 
the  refinement  of  art.  Painting  is  the  conveyance  of 
thought  and  feeling  by  color  and  by  form.  Words  do  the 
same  with  form  and  without  color,  but  all  painting  that 
is  simply  form  and  color  without  any  thought  and  deep 
feeling  behind  it  is  not  artistic  work  but  artisan  work. 

I  am  very  glad  to  be  here,  because  we  have  in  our  guest  a 
man  who  has  sVt  his  art  far  above  the  frivolities  of  art.  He 
has  not  set  out  to  tickle  our  fancy  ;  he  has  seized  life  by  its 
very  highest  elements,  and  speaks  to  us  through  his  canvas 
in  our  deepest  moods  and  our  most  pious  aspirations.  He 
is  not,  therefore,  a  mere  mechanical  artist,  but  he  is  an  artist 
because  he  is  a  man  of  jM-ofound  moral  convictions.  He 
comes  to  us  from  the  land  of  song,  of  art  and  of  heroes. 
He  comes  from  the  land  of  the  great  Louis  Kossuth. 
[Applause.]  It  is  a  memory  I  cherish,  and  have  a  right  to 
cherish,  that  Plymouth  Church  was  the  first  that  was  opened 
to  raise  funds  for  him  in  his  sacred  mission.  When  that 
great  audience  had  contributed  five  thousand  ilollars  for  him, 
profoundly  affected  as   he  was,  he  threw   his  arms  aiound 


TlilBUTE   TO    MUNKACSY  63 

me,  and  kissed  me  on  both  checks,  and  I  saitl :  "  After 
this,  no  man  can  honor  me."  I  would  to  God  that 
the  same  facihties  of  speech  which  Kossuth  had,  had  also 
been  given  to  our  distinguished  guest  ;  for  if  he  had  the 
same  gift  of  language  that  he  has  of  pictorial  art,  he  would 
have  transported  us  with  his  eloquence.  [Great  apj)lause.] 
I  marvel  that  our  Government  did  not  make  him  pay 
duty  when  he  came  here.  You  cannot  bring  in  a  picture 
without  paying  duty  on  it.  Why  don't  they  collect  a  tariff 
on  ministers?  [Laughter.]  They  let  them  come  in  free. 
[Renewed  laughter.] 


TUNIS    GARRETT    BERGEN 


THE  FIRST  SETTLERS  OF  NEW  NETHERLANDS 


[Speech  of  Tunis  G.  Bergen  at  the  tenth   annual  dinner  of  the   II 
nd  Society  of   New  York,   January  29,    1895.     The  l*resident,   Wan 


[lol- 
land  Society  of  New  York,  January  29,  1895.  The  l^resident,  Warner 
Van  Norden,  occupied  the  chair,  an.d  called  upon  Mr.  Bergen  to  speak 
to  the  toast  :  "  The  First  Settlers  of  New  Netherlands  ;  worthy  scions  of 
the  Batavian  stock."  "  The  next  speaker,"  said  the  Chairman,  "  is  a  fel- 
low-nieniber  of  our  Society,  whom  we  always  delight  to  hear,  and  one 
whom  we  are  soon  to  welcome  also  as  a  fellow-citizen,  coming  as  he  does 
from  that  part  of  ovir  city  of  New  York,  latel}-  called  Brookhm.  [Laugh- 
ter.] It  also  gives  me  pleasure  to  announce  a  fact  which  was  made 
public  to-day,  and  that  is,  that  the  Governor  of  our  State  has  appointed 
him  one  of  the  State  Commissioners  of  Charities  luider  the  new  Consti- 
tution. [Applause.]  I  beg  to  introduce  to  you— indeed  he  needs  no 
introduction,  for  j-ou  all  know  him  as  well  as  I — the  Hon.  Tunis  G. 
Bergen."] 

Mr.  President  and  Fellow-Dutchmen  of  Ameri- 
can Descent: — [Laughter.]  After  refusing  about  six  or 
seven  times,  I  found  the  Committee  kept  on  printing  my 
name  as  responding  to  some  toast  or  other.  I  consider  that 
the  Committee  are  about  the  Dutchest  of  the  Dutch,  and 
hence  I  find  myself  here  to-night  on  the  programme.  The 
toast,  however,  to  which  I  have  been  called  to  respond,  I 
would  state,  is  not  a  milk  toast  [laughter],  and  since  it  is  a 
hard  toast  for  me,  I  will  ask  you  to  put  the  butter  on  and 
help  me  out.     [Laughter.] 

It  is  not  a  hard  task  to  introduce  you  to  your  sires,  the 
first  Americans  ;  but  the  pencil  of  caricature  and  the  pen  of 
writers,  more  or  less  distinguished,  have  exhausted  their 
wit  and  humor  in  so  depicting  the  personal  qualities  of  the 
first  settlers,  that  it  is  high  time  that  at  a  Dutch  dinner  the 
light  of  truth  should  be  shown.  ["Hear!  Hear!"]  The 
trouble   about    these   humorists — chiefl\'  tlic  New   England 

64 


THE    FIRST   SETTLERS   OF    NEW    NETHERLANDS       65 

historians  who  write  our  school-books  |  l.iughtcr]— who  of 
course  are  careful  not  to  omit  New  England  in  the  history 
of  the  progress  of  America  [laughtcrj— has  been  when  they 
considered  the  characters  of  the  first  settlers  of  New  Nether- 
land,  that  they  were  confused  by  the  costumes  of  the  New 
Netherlanders.  Now,  you  know  that  Holland,  in  the 
seventeenth  and  in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
was  the  country,  the  only  country,  of  fine  woolens  and  fine 
linens.  The  weavers  of  Holland  were  famous.  You  re- 
member in  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth  that  whenever  they 
had  a  tablecloth  (which  I  believe  was  only  in  the  palace), 
or  a  napkin  (and  the  Dutch  called  it  a  doylic — it  is  a  fash- 
ionable word  to-day)  or  anything  in  the  way  of  fine  linen, 
they  always  called  it  "Hollands,"  because  Holland  was  the 
only  country  that  had  fine  linen  at  that  period.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  at  that  time  Hollanders  were  the  only  people 
who  wore  good  underclothing.  [Great  laughter.]  In  the 
seventeenth  century,  gentlemen,  outside  of  Holland  there 
was  not  a  night-shirt.  [Renewed  laughter.]  That  is  an 
historic  fact.  And  outside  of  Holland  there  were  no — 
what  shall  I  say  when  I  speak  of  women  ?—  there  were  no 
robes  de  unit.  [Laughter.]  You  will  pardon  the  French  at 
a  Dutch  dinner,  but  the  Dutch  is  too  accurate.  [Renewed 
laughter.] 

You  remember  the  stately  chronicler  of  England,  when 
he  speaks  of  the  way  that  the  virgin  Queen  Elizabeth  of 
England  retired  with  her  maids  of  honor.  Of  course  you 
do,  and  as  descendants  of  your  modest  sires  you  cannot  ask 
me  to  tell  the  story.  [Renewed  laughter.  "  Go  on,  go  on."] 
There  is  a  man  from  the  Rondout  who  says  "  Go  on." 
[Great  laughter  and  applause.]  I  am  Dutch  enough  to  go 
on.  It  is  said  in  the  stately  language  of  the  ancient  chron- 
iclers, that  when  the  Queen  of  England — and  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  representative  of  the  St.  George  Society  I 
shall  allude  to  her  as  Her  Majesty — retired,  or,  as  we  should 
say  in  Dutch,  was  put  to  bed  [great  laughter],  she  was 
simply  laid  between  the  feather  beds  in  a  state  of  nature. 
[Renewed  laughter.]  There  was  not  a  linen  toilet  in  the 
civilization  of  Europe,  outside  of  the  civilization  of  Hol- 
land. 

Now,  think  of  the  sneers  of  the  nations  whom  the  Dutch 


66  TUNIS  GARRETT  BERGEN 

had  excelled  (that  includes  all  the  nations  except  the 
Dutch)  in  arms  and  in  commerce,  in  industry  and  in  art — • 
when  they  spoke  of  little  Holland.  They  alluded  to  her  as 
a  little  country,  simply  scooped  uj)  out  of  the  sand,  in  which 
men  did  not  live,  but  went  on  board  [great  laughter]  ;  and 
when  the  sea  broke  in  on  them,  the  country  simply  sprung 
a  leak.  [Renewed  laughter.]  It  was  the  same  jealous  peo- 
ple who,  looking  upon  the  costumes,  the  rich  costumes  of 
the  first  settlers  of  New  Netherlands  (and  you  know  what 
costumes  the  first  settlers,  wore :  those  long  and  roomy 
waistcoats,  made  of  the  best  Dutch  material,  and  those  ca- 
pacious breeches,  the  envy  of  the  outer  world,  and  now 
called  knickerbockers),  said  in  their  vulgar,  sneering  way, 
that  the  first  settlers  were  built  like  their  ships  [laughter], 
broad  in  the  bow  and  high  in  the  stern.  [Great  laughter.] 
But  you  might  as  well,  gentlemen,  attempt  to  determine 
the  character  of  the  woman  of  fashion  to-day  by  the  size  of 
her  sleeves.  [Laughter.]  The  first  settlers  simply  wore 
their  big  sleeves  on  their  legs.     [Great  laughter,] 

But  if  you  wish  to  know  what  the  first  settlers  looked 
like,  enter  the  galleries  of  Holland,  the  land  of  portraits, 
and  there  you  will  see  the  figures  and  the  portraits  of  the 
contemporaries  of  our  first  settlers  and  some  of  the  portraits 
of  themselves.  From  that  group  of  the  four  brothers  of 
William  of  Orange,  men  of  noble  heads,  with  eyes  that 
seem  to  pierce  the  future,  every  one  of  whom  filled  a  hero's 
grave,  down  to  the  civic  guards,  the  students  at  the  hospital, 
the  soldiers  in  battle  and  the  sailors  on  the  decks,  you  will 
see  the  men  of  broad  brows  and  fine  features,  handsome 
men,  with  minds  of  breadth  and  wills  of  iron  and  hearts  of 
truth — the  moral  and  intellectual  athletes  of  the  modern 
world  !     [Great  applause.     "  Hear  !     Hear  !  "] 

There  is  another  reason,  however,  why  a  distorted  view 
has  been  taken  of  the  first  settler  of  New  Netherlands,  and 
that  is  because  of  his  language.  Although  the  first  settlers 
came  from  a  land  where  every  man  could  read  and  write, 
and  where  public  schools  had  been  in  existence  for  two 
generations  before  they  landed,  still  it  was  the  sneer  of  the 
Spaniard  and  the  Englishman  of  those  days  that  because 
the  Dutch  did  not  speak  English  or  Spanish  fluently  they 
must  be  ignorant  or  illiterate.     And  that  gave  another  dis- 


THE    FIRST   SETTLERS   OF    NEW    XETHKRLAXDS       67 

torted  view  of  the  first  settlers.  Of  course  you  all  speak 
Dutch  [laughter],  at  least,  if  you  only  speak  French  at  the 
soup,  you  speak  Dutch  at  the  dessert,  and  the  longer  you 
stay  the  better  is  the  Dutch.  Besides,  in  moments  of  high 
inspiration,  we  descendants  of  the  first  settlers  speak  the 
ancient  Dutch  with  great  freedom.  I  remember  a  few  years 
ago  when  I  was  on  a  trout-fishing  excursion  in  that  part  of 
our  State  where  Dutch  names  abound,  where  many  of  the 
mountains  are  bergs  and  where  all  the  streams  are  kills, 
worn  out  and  hungry  and  thirsty  I  reached  a  house,  and 
before  a  blazing  fireplace  glowing  with  Dutch  hospitality  I 
found  a  group  of  men, — fishermen,  tired,  hungry,  and  thirsty 
like  myself,  whom  by  their  handsome  countenances  I  knew 
to  be  descendants  of  the  first  settlers  of  New  Netherlands. 
["  A  sure  sign."]  It  is  a  sure  sign,  some  one  says,  and  I 
may  say,  in  looking  upon  you,  that  if  you  have  not  brought 
with  you  your  certificates  of  membership  I  would  know  you 
were  descendants  of  the  early  settlers.  [Great  laughter.] 
But  on  approaching  these  gentlemen  at  the  fireplace,  I 
naturally  addressed  them  in  the  words  of  the  ancient  tongue 
and  they  responded  and  rose  as  one  man  and  drank  the 
health  of  the  first  settlers  of  New  Ncthcrland.  My  words 
were  simply  those  seductive  but  eloquent  words:  "Mijne 
Heeren,  schnaps !  "     [Great  laughter  and  applause.] 

There  is  another  subject  to  which,  even  in  the  presence 
of  the  President  of  the  Colonial  Wars  Society — and  there 
was  no  peace,  I  suppose,  in  Colonial  times — I  may  venture 
to  allude.  I  refer  to  the  purchase  of  Manhattan  Island.  It 
has  been  said  by  the  flippant  historians  of  to-day  that  the 
price  paid  for  Manhattan  Island  by  the  Dutch  was  very 
trifling,  and  that  it  showed  that  the  Dutch  were  very  shrewd 
and  the  poor  Indian  was  deceived.  The  later  historians 
have  affected  to  say,  in  their  petty  way,  that  the  articles 
which  the  Dutch  g^ve  for  Manhattan  Island,  consisting  of 
so  many  steel  knives  and  steel  needles  and  other  metal  ar- 
ticles, and  beads,  were  an  inadequate  price  for  the  island. 
Now,  the  question  is,  What  was  Manhattan  Island  worth  at 
that  time?     What  was  the  Indian  point  of  view  ? 

What  was  Manhattan  Island  ?  The  Indian  had  vast  pos- 
sessions, bounded  by  the  ocean  on  the  east  and  the  setting 
sun  on  the  west — hunting  grounds  galore  !     What  was  Man- 


68  TUNIS  GARRETT  BERGEN 

hattan  Island  ?  It  was  a  mass  of  rocks.  There  was  not  a 
feeding  ground  for  deer  on  it ;  the  soil  was  too  poor. 
There  was  not  a  spawning  ground  for  fish  on  it ;  the  tides 
were  too  swift.  It  abounded  in  swamps,  and  the  few  streams 
that  meandered  through  the  rocks  were  so  shallow  and  slug- 
gish that  even  the  beavers  thought  they  were  not  worth  a 
dam.  [Laughter.]  Of  course,  other  damns  came  later,  but 
not  beaver  dams.  Now,  the  Indians  were  shrewd  traders 
and  no  mean  financiers.  Think  of  the  currency  of  the 
Indians  of  the  North  American  Continent.  Beaver  skins 
and  wampum  !  It  was  never  inflated,  and  when  anybody 
attempted  to  palm  off  an  old  moth-eaten  beaver  skin  for  a 
good  beaver  skin,  the  Indians  simply  said  :  "  Bad  beaver 
skin  ;  no  good."  And  when  bad  wampum  was  offered  him 
he  simply  said  :  "  Heap  bad  shells  ;  no  good."  You  could 
not  redeem  their  good  wampum  and  their  good  beaver  skins 
with  bad  wampum  or  bad  beaver  skins.  They  always  main- 
tained the  value  of  their  currency  [laughter],  and  they 
never  were  obliged  in  times  of  peace  to  issue  bonds  in  order 
to  borrow  wampum  to  carry  on  the  government.  They 
simply  changed  the  governments  [cheers  and  laughter]  ; 
that  is,  changed  the  governments  from  one  place  to  another 
[renewed  laughter],  but  always  maintained  the  value  of 
wampum.  So  that  the  candid  historian  of  to-day  who  con- 
siders the  transaction  of  the  purchase  of  Manhattan  Island 
will  say  that  because  of  the  shrewdness  and  financial  ability 
of  tlie  Indians,  and  the  generosity  or  indifTerence  of  the 
Dutch,  the  price  paid  for  Manhattan  Island  was  about  five 
knives  too  much.  [Laughter.]  Of  course,  since  then,  land 
has  become  dearer  and  knives  have  become  cheaper  and 
more  abundant.  [Laughter.]  But  still  there  have  been 
times  when  knives  were  not  so  abundant ;  for  example,  at 
the  last  election,  when  there  were  not  enough  knives  to  go 
round.     [Great  laughter.] 

Think  of  the  country,  my  brothers,  which  the  first  settlers 
founded  !  The  richest  domain  in  the  temperate  zone ! 
Beginning  at  the  ocean,  where  a  mighty  river  empties  with 
two  magnificent  bays,  it  extends  and  covers  an  area  of 
hundreds  of  square  miles,  over  the  timbered  mountains,  the 
fertile  valleys,  the  well-watered  plains,  including  that  neck- 
lace of  lakes  where  the  five  nations  of  the  Indians  lived,  to 


THE    FIRST    SICTTLERS    OF    NEW    NETlIlORIwW'I  )S        ()() 

the  shores  of  the  monster  frcsli-watcr  seas  on  the  north 
and  the  plains  of  the  unknown  on  the  west.  It  was  the  hind 
where  nature  built  the  throne  of  Western  civilization  !  To- 
day the  bones  of  those  first  settlers  have  long  ago  mingled 
with  the  dust.  All  honor  to  their  graves !  They  adorn  the 
land  of  New  Netherlands  from  the  shores  of  Long  Island, 
the  hills  of  New  Jersey,  the  valley  of  the  Hudson,  the 
banks  of  the  Rondout,  the  slopes  of  Fort  Orange,  to  the 
sources  of  the  Mohawk.  Emblems  are  they  of  courage  and 
endurance,  of  enterprise  and  industry,  of  immortal  faith  and 
freedom. 

When  the  piratical  capture  of  New  Netherlands  in  a  time 
of  peace  by  the  English  fleet  took  place  (and  there  were 
more  cannon  on  the  English  vessels  than  there  were 
soldiers  on  the  shore),  and  the  flag  of  the  Netherlands  was 
reluctantly  hauled  down,  it  was  tlic  flag  of  a  Republic  that 
trailed  in  the  dust.  [Applause.]  Then  began  the  long  and 
narrow  Colonial  sway  of  the  English  kings,  which  lasted  for 
a  hundred  years.  But  the  indomitable  spirit  of  the  Dutch 
was  not  dead.  The  lessons  of  freedom — in  Church  and 
State — which  the  Netherlanders  gave  were  being  learned 
by  the  peoples  of  the  world.  For  behold,  when  the  hun- 
dred years  were  over  and  the  new  American  Republic 
appeared  upon  the  stage,  its  declaration  of  independence 
contained  the  same  sentiments  and  many  of  the  same 
phrases,  translated  from  the  good  old  Dutch  of  that  older 
declaration  of  independence  of  the  Union  of  Utrecht  two 
hundred  years  before  [applause],  and  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion of  the  New  Republic  took  as  its  guide  and  model  the 
Constitution  of  that  older  Republic  across  the  sea.  And 
lo  and  behold  !  when  the  standard  of  the  new  Republic 
was  raised  to  the  flagstaff,  the  red,  white  and  blue  of  the 
flag  of  the  United  States  of  the  Netherlands  were  the  only 
colors  in  the  flag  of  the  United  States  of  America.  [Great 
applause.] 


ALBERT  J.   BEVERIDGE 


THE  REPUBLIC  THAT  NEVER  RETREATS 

[Speech  of  Senator  Albert  J.  Beveridge  delivered  at  a  banquet  of  the 
I'nion  League  Club,  Philadelphia,  Penn.,  February  15,  1S99.  The  Presi- 
dent of  the  Club  occupied  the  chair.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — The  Republic 
never  retreats.  Why  should  it  retreat  ?  The  Republic  is 
the  highest  form  of  civilization,  and  civilization  must 
advance.  The  Republic's  young  men  are  the  most  virile 
and  unwasted  in  the  world,  and  they  pant  for  enter- 
prise worthy  of  their  power.  The  Republic's  preparation 
has  been  the  self-discipline  of  a  century,  and  that  prepared- 
ness has  found  its  task.  The  Republic's  opportunity  is  as 
noble  as  its  strength,  and  that  opportunity  is  here.  The 
Republic's  duty  is  as  sacred  as  its  opportunity  is  real,  and 
Americans  never  desert  their  duty. 

The  Republic  could  not  retreat  if  it  would.  Whatever  its 
destiny  it  must  proceed.  For  the  American  Republic  is  a 
part  of  the  movement  of  a  race — the  most  masterful  race  of 
history — and  race  movements  are  not  to  be  stayed  by  the 
hand  of  man.     They  are  mighty  answers  to  divine  commands. 

What  is  England's  glory?  England's  immortal  glory  is 
not  Agincourt  or  Waterloo.  It  is  not  her  merchandise  or 
commerce.  It  is  Australia,  New  Zealand,  and  Africa  re- 
claimed. It  is  India  redeemed.  It  is  Egypt,  mummy  of  the 
nations,  touched  into  modern  life. 

England's  imperishable  renown  is  in  English  science  throt- 
tling the  plague  in  Calcutta,  English  law  administering  order 
in  Bombay,  English  energy  planting  an  industrial  civilization 
from  Cairo  to  the  cape,  and  English  discipline  creating  sol- 
diers, men,  and  finally  citizens,  perhaps,  even  out  of  the 
fellaheen  of  the  dead  land   of  the   Pharaohs,     And  yet  the 

70 


THE  REPUBLIC  THAT  NEVER  RETREATS     7 1 

liberties  of  Englishmen  were  never  so  secure  as  now.  And 
that  which  is  England's  undying  fame  has  also  been  her 
infinite  profit,  so  sure  is  duty  golden  in  the  cui\. 

The  dominant  notes  in  American  history  have  thus  far 
been  self-government  and  internal  improvements,  liut  these 
were  not  ends ;  they  were  means.  They  were  modes  of 
preparation.  The  dominant  notes  in  American  life  hence- 
forth will  be,  not  onlj^  self-government  and  internal  develoj)- 
ment,  but  also  administration  and  world  improvement. 

The  future  of  Cuba  is  to  be  worked  out  by  the  wisdom  of 
events.  Ultimately  annexation  is  as  certain  as  that  island's 
existence.  Even  if  Cubans  are  capable  of  self-government, 
every  interest  points  to  union.  We  and  they  may  blunder 
forward  and  timidly  try  devices  of  doubt.  ]^ut  in  the  end 
Jefferson's  desire  will  be  fulfilled,  and  Cuba  will  be  a  part  of 
the  great  republic. 

The  Philippines  are  ours  forever.  Let  faint  hearts  anoint 
their  fears  with  the  thought  that  some  day  American  admin- 
istration and  American  duty  there  may  end.  But  they  never 
will  end.  England's  occupation  of  Egypt  was  to  be  tem- 
porary ;  but  events,  which  are  the  commands  of  God,  are 
making  it  permanent.  And  now  God  has  given  us  this  Paci- 
fic empire  for  civilized  administration.  The  first  office  of 
the  administration  is  order.  Order  must  be  established 
throughout  the  archipelago. 

Rebellion  against  the  authority  of  the  flag  must  be  crushed 
without  delay,  for  hesitation  encourages  revolt,  and  without 
anger,  for  the  turbulent  children  know  not  what  they  do. 
And  then  civilization  must  be  organized,  administered  and 
maintained.  Law  and  justice  must  rule  where  savages, 
tyranny  and  caprice  have  rioted.  The  people  must  be  taught 
the  art  of  orderly  and  continuous  industry. 

The  frail  of  faith  declare  that  those  peoples  are  not  fitted 
for  citizenship.  It  is  not  proposed  to  make  them  citizens. 
Those  who  see  disaster  in  every  forward  step  of  the  republic 
prophesy  that  cheap  labor  from  the  Philippines  will  overrun 
our  country  and  starve  our  workingmen.  But  the  Javanese 
have  not  so  overrun  Holland.  New  Zealand's  Malays,  Aus- 
tralia's bushmen,  Africa's  Kaffirs,  Zulus  and  Hottentots,  and 
India's  millions  of  surplus  labor  have  not  so  overrun  England. 

Those  who  measure  duty  by  dollars  cry  out  at  the  expense. 


72  ALBERT   J.    BEVERIDGE 

When  did  America  ever  count  the  cost  of  righteousness  ? 
And,  besides,  this  RepubHc  must  have  a  mighty  navy  in  any 
event.  And  new  markets  secured,  new  enterprises  opened, 
new  resources  in  timber,  mines  and  products  of  the  tropics 
acquired,  and  the  vitalization  of  all  our  industries  which  will 
follow,  will  pay  back  a  thousandfold  all  the  government 
spends  in  discharging  the  highest  duty  to  which  the  Republic 
may  be  called. 

Tiie  blood  already  shed  is  but  a  drop  to  that  which  would 
flow  if  America  should  desert  its  post  in  the  Pacific.  And 
the  blood  already  spilled  was  poured  out  upon  the  altar  of 
the  world's  regeneration.  Manila  is  as  noble  as  Omdurman, 
and  both  are  holier  than  Jericho.  Retreat  from  the  Philip- 
pines on  any  pretext  would  be  the  master  cowardice  of  his- 
tory. It  would  be  the  betrayal  of  a  trust  as  sacred  as  hu- 
manity. It  would  be  a  crime  against  Christian  civilization, 
and  would  mark  the  beginning  of  the  decadence  of  our  race. 
And  so,  thank  God,  the  Republic  never  retreats. 

Imperialism  is  not  the  word  for  our  vast  work.  Imperi- 
alism, as  used  by  the  opposers  of  national  greatness,  means 
oppression,  and  we  oppress  not.  Imperialism,  as  used  by 
the  opposers  of  national  destiny,  means  monarchy,  and  the 
days  of  monarchy  are  spent.  Imperialism,  as  used  by  the 
opposers  of  national  progress,  is  a  word  to  frighten  the  faint 
of  heart,  and  so  is  powerless  with  the  fearless  American 
people. 

The  Republic  never  retreats.  Its  flag  is  the  only  flag  that 
has  never  known  defeat.  Where  that  flag  leads  we  follow, 
for  we  know  that  the  hand  that  bears  it  onward  is  the  un- 
seen hand  of  God.  We  follow  the  flag  and  independence  is 
ours.  We  follow  the  flag  and  nationality  is  ours.  We  follow 
the  flag  and  oceans  are  ruled.  We  follow  the  flag,  and  in 
Occident  and  Orient  tyranny  falls  and  barbarism  is  subdued. 

We  followed  the  flag  at  Trenton  and  Valley  Forge,  at 
Saratoga  and  upon  the  crimson  seas,  at  Buena  Vista  and 
Chapultepec,  at  Gettysburg  and  Mission  ridge,  at  Santiago 
and  Manila,  and  everywhere  and  always  it  means  larger 
liberty,  nobler  opportunity,  and  greater  human  happiness  ; 
for  everywhere  and  always  it  means  the  blessings  of  the 
greater  Republic.  And  so  God  leads,  we  follow  the  flag,  and 
the  Republic  never  retreats. 


JAMES   GILLESPIE  JJLAINE 
Pholograimre  after  a  photograph  from  life 


JAMES   GILLESPIE   BLAINE 


OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE 

[Speech  of  James  Gillespie  Blaine  at  the  iiitli  annual  banquet  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York,  May  15,  1S79.  Mr. 
Blaine  responded  impromptu  to  the  toast  :  "  Steam  Mail  I^ines  ;  the  keys 
with  whicli  wise  statesmen  open  foreign  ports  to  maritime  commerce."] 

Mr.  Chairman: — I  rise  only  to  get  out  of  the  way,  in 
order  that  this  procession  may  go  forward.  [Laughter.]  I 
am  a  mere  chance  comer — a  disturber  of  the  programme — 
but  I  do  not  intend  to  be  made  the  butt  of  either  the  flat- 
tery or  the  wit  of  the  last  speaker.  [Laughter.]  When, 
however,  I  come  to  read  this  toast,  I  really  do  not  know 
exactly  at  what  it  is  aimed.  If  it  is  aimed  at  mc,  it  is  to 
congratulate  me  on  failure,  and  not  on  a  success.  If  it  be 
a  confession,  on  the  part  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
that  it  is  their  creed,  then  it  is  the  beginning  of  the  end  of 
the  victory  to  come  [laughter  and  applause]  ;  because,  if  I 
speak  the  voice  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  New  York, 
in  that  toast,  I  know  that  I  speak  with  a  voice  far  mightier 
than  any  that  has  been  raised  in  Congress,  and  I  have  it  to 
declare,  that  if  it  be  the  will  of  that  Chamber,  ami  of  the 
people,  to  initiate  a  policy  for  the  revival  of  American  com- 
merce, then  it  is  done  !     [Applause.] 

But  you  will  permit  me  to  say,  speaking  as  an  outsider, 
to  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  and  coming  as  I  do  from  a 
commercial  State,  that  commerce  as  well  as  religion  needs 
a  revival  in  this  country.  [Laughter.]  Every  other  interest 
in  this  country  for  the  last  fifteen  years, — even  including  the 
year  1866-67,  a  year  of  doubt  and  depression — has  been 
gathering  strength,  and  is  ready  to  march  forward  to  victory, 
save   only  the  commerce    of    the    nation.     [The    Rev.   Dr. 

73 


74  JAMES   GILLESPIE    BLAINE 

Bellows:  "And  religion."]  My  dear  friend,  Dr.  Bellows, 
suggests  religion  also.     [Laughter.] 

Now  I  suppose  that  figures  are  familiar  to  you,  gentlemen, 
but  the  figures  of  American  commerce  in  its  decline  are 
startling.  Twenty  years  ago,  of  the  tonnage  engaged  in 
the  foreign  trade  of  the  United  States,  fully  three-fourths 
was  American  tonnage.  Of  the  tonnage  engaged  in  the 
foreign  trade  of  the  United  States  to-day,  not  one-fourth 
is  American.  In  1856-57,  Great  Britain,  the  leading  com- 
mercial nation  of  the  world,  had  only  950,000  tons  engaged 
in  trade  between  the  United  States  and  that  kingdom.  She 
has  5,200,000  tons  now.  Germany  then  had  but  iG6,ooo 
tons ;  this  last  year  she  had  950,000  tons.  Norway  and 
Sweden,  twenty  years  ago,  had  in  trade  between  this 
country  and  their  own  but  20,000  tons  ;  last  year  the 
reports  show  that  she  had  850,000  tons.  Even  Austria, 
penned  up  with  a  limited  seaboard  as  she  is,  had  in  com- 
merce with  us,  twenty  years  ago,  not  a  vessel  of  her  own  ; 
but  last  year  she  had  not  less  than  220,000  tons.  And  I 
might  go  on  thus  through  the  whole  list.     [Applause.] 

In  this  mighty  increase  of  commerce,  from  4,400,000  to 
over  11,000,000  tons  in  a  single  year,  the  United  States  has 
gone  backward,  and  all  the  vast  profit  of  this  trade  has  gone 
into  the  coffers  of  other  nations.  [Applause.]  Let  me  ask 
of  you  here,  what  other  interests  have  gone  backward  in 
that  period  ?  Have  manufactures  ?  They  have  outstripped 
imagination.  Has  agriculture  ?  Why,  it  has  gone  ahead  of 
every  possible  calculation.  Mas  internal  commerce?  Why, 
it  has  increased  from  thirty  thousand  to  sixty-eight  thousand 
miles  of  railroad.  The  Government  of  the  United  States,  be- 
sides giving  sixty  millions  in  money,  has  given  to  internal 
commerce  over  200,000,000  acres  of  the  public  domain, — 
more  than  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio  and 
Maryland  combined.  And  meantime  she  has  protected,  by 
tariff,  every  article  that  the  American  artisan  and  the  Amer- 
ican capitalist  would  invest  in  the  manufacture  of.  [Ap- 
plause.] ]>ut,  for  the  foreign  commerce  of  this  country 
what  lias  she  done?  Left  it  to  the  alien  and  the  stranger; 
and  in  the  last  ten  years,  the  value  of  the  products  carried 
between  this  country  and  foreign  countries  has  exceeded 
eleven  thousand  millions  of  dollars  a  year,  out  of  the  carry- 


OUR  mp:rciiant  marine  75 

ing  of  which  somebody  has  made  $i  10,000,000  per  annum — 
a  sum  far  larger  than  the  interest  of  the  pubHc  debt.  [Ap- 
plause.] And  who  has  made  this  money  ?  France,  Eng- 
land, Germany — everybody,  excepting  the  United  States. 
Think  of  it  !  $110,000,000,  in  gold  coin  has  gone  out  of  tlic 
commerce  of  this  country  into  the  commerce  of  other  coun- 
tries. Can  New  York  stand  this  ?  Can  this  great  port  sus- 
tain such  a  loss  as  this,  with  all  her  unbounded  advantages 
of  position  and  of  resources,  and  with  the  magnificent  con- 
tinental commerce  that  stands  behind  her? 

I  say,  gentlemen,  that  if  the  carrying  trade  of  this  country, 
aggi'egating  $110,000,000,  is  permanently  turned  from  us, 
then  the  question  of  specie  payments  becomes  one  of  far 
more  complicated  difficulty  than  it  is  to-day  ;  and  the  only 
way  to  make  that  ([uestion  easier  of  solution  is  to  turn  that 
current  of  gold  from  these  coffers  into  our  own.  [Applause.] 
I  said  just  now  that  I  come  from  a  commercial  State;  but 
our  State  is   a  State  that   flourishes  with   fleets  of  sailing- 

o 

ships,  and  the  day  of  sailing-vessels  in  commerce  is  over. 
The  North  Atlantic  commerce  is  in  the  hands  of  the  steam- 
ships to-day,  and  of  this  your  own  commerce,  from  your  own 
port  of  New  York,  represents  at  least  2,000  vessels  of  1,000 
tons  each,  and  it  is  all  in  the  hands  of  Europeans. 

An  old  ship-captain  was  once  telling  me  of  the  value  of 
commerce.  He  was  one  of  those  wise,  thrifty  captains  of 
the  old  time,  who  owned  a  share  of  his  vessel  himself,  and 
some  of  you,  doubtless,  have  met  a  few  of  his  class.  He 
said  :  "  People  do  not  understand  this  commercial  question. 
I  once  took  a  load  of  coal  from  Cardiff  to  Valparaiso,  and  I 
got  considerably  more  for  carrying  it  than  the  coal  was 
worth.  Then  I  took  back  to  England  a  cargo  of  guano 
from  the  Chinchas,  and  I  was  paid  more  for  carrying  it  than 
the  cargo  was  worth  ;  and  so  I  made  more  out  of  the  wind 
and  the  waves  than  these  merchants  do,  with  all  their  risk 
and  shrewdness."  And  that  is  what  commerce  does.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

But,  since  that  time,  great  changes  have  taken  place  in 
the  methods  of  commerce,  and  great  changes  are  going  oil 
to-day.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  said,  that  in  the  last  ten 
years,  the  loss  to  landed  estates  in  Great  Britain  has 
amounted  to  eight  million  pounds  sterling.     Now  this  great 


76  JAMES   GILLESPIE    BLAINE 

loss  is  easily  accounted  for,  if  we  look  for  it.  It  is  a  result 
of  the  progress  made  in  the  means  and  facilities  of  cheap 
transportation.  To-day  you  can  put  a  barrel  of  flour  or  a 
bushel  of  wheat  from  Chicago  into  Liverpool  at  a  cheaper 
rate  than  you  could  bring  it  ten  years  ago  from  Buffalo  to 
New  York.  With  this  cheap  rate  for  freights,  therefore,  the 
great  landed  estates  of  England,  that  are  rented  at  two 
pounds  to  two  pounds  ten  shillings  per  acre,  cannot  pretend 
to  compete  with  products  that  are  raised  on  lands,  the  fee- 
simple  of  which  is  not  half  as  much  as  the  annual  of  the 
English  lands.     [Applause.] 

In  view  of  these  facts,  I  say  we  are  destined  to  feed  the 
world,  because  we  can  do  it  cheaper  than  anybody  else  can 
do  it.  [Applause.]  We  are,  in  fact,  doing  that  to-day,  and 
yet  we  are  weakly  losing  the  opportunity  to  reap  these  vast 
profits  that  come  from  the  carrying  trade  of  our  products. 
There  is  no  reason  why  this  should  be  so.  There  are  per- 
sons here,  I  dare  say,  that  can  remember  when  "  Clinton's 
ditch  "  [the  Erie  Canal]  had  the  water  let  into  it.  Nobody 
appears  willing,  I  see,  to  acknowledge  such  antiquity!  [A 
voice:  "Yes,  yes;  here."]  Well,  you  all  probably  have 
heard  of  it.  [Laughter.]  Why,  the  tonnage  from  New  York 
to  Buffalo  was  eighty-five  dollars  a  ton  the  year  before  that 
"ditch"  was  opened,  but  it  fell  to  nine  dollars  a  ton  the  year 
afterward.  That  was  considered  a  marvel,  and  yet  that 
is  more  than  it  is  to-day  from  the  far  Northwest,  from  Min- 
neapolis to  the  principal  ports  of  Europe. 

There  is  nothing  that  we  have  not  done  in  this  country 
to  encourage  railroad  building.  We  have  gone  wild  on 
that !  [Laughter.]  We  have  built  them  where  they  were 
needed,  and  we  have  built  them  where  they  were  not  needed. 
We  have  built  those  that  paid  well,  with  much  doubt  and 
blind  distrust  ;  and  we  have  rushed  with  blind  confidence 
into  building  roads  that,  after  they  were  built,  did  not  pay  a 
penny.  In  this  multiplication  of  lines  of  transportation,  we 
have  brought  all  our  vast  national  products  to  the  seaboard, 
and  think  that  that  is  to  be  the  end  of  the  line.  We  have 
reaped  the  profits  of  it  so  far,  and  then  are  willing  to  let 
foreigners  have  the  rest  of  it.  Why,  it  is  one  continuous 
route  from  Chicago  to  Liverpool;  but  we  take  i,ooo  miles 
and  give  3,000  m.iles  to  the  foreigner,  and  that   is   the   way 


OUR    MERCHANT    MARINE  77 

we  are  dividing  our  carrying-trade.  Why  should  \vc  not 
carry  it  across  the  sea,  if  they  can  make  a  profit  in  doing  it  ? 
[^Applause.] 

As  I  said  at  the  outset  of  my  somewhat  rambling  remarks, 
if  you  had  addressed  this  toast  to  me,  it  is  to  remind  me 
that  all  my  adjurations  and  declarations  up  to  this  time  on 
this  subject  have  been  futile.  If  you  intend  it  as  a  declara- 
tion of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  that  its  influence  and  its 
resources  and  the  influences  of  the  vast  forces  of  our  coun- 
try are  to  be  used  in  the  effort  for  a  revival  of  the  maritime 
commerce,  you  may  consider  the  thing  as  accomplished. 
"  If  it  is  possible,  it  is  done  already  ;  if  it  is  impossible,  you 
will  see  that  it  is  done."  You  can  apply  the  Tallej-rand 
motto  to  this  question.  Vo?^.  can  do  it,  and  no  other  power 
in  this  country  can  do  it.  [Applause.]  I  am  not  here,  of 
course,  to  invoke  any  controversy  on  this  matter,  but  I  am 
here  to  say  that,  thus  far,  so  far  as  our  legislation  is  con- 
cerned, the  influence  of  New  York  has  not  been  felt  in  that 
direction.  When  you  get  ready  to  exert  it,  let  us  hear  from 
you  by  telegraph.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

When  the  old  lady  was  training  her  son  for  the  trapeze, 
the  boy  made  three  or  four  rather  ineffectual  efforts  to  get 
over  the  bar.  Then  she  was  heard  to  suggest  :  "  John 
Henry  Hobbs,  if  you  will  just  throw  your  heart  over  the 
bars,  your  body  will  follow."  [Laughter.]  And  so  it  is 
with  you.  If  New  York  will  throw  her  heart  into  this 
matter,  the  rest  will  follow,  and  then  Ave  shall  have  com- 
merce and  manufacturing  and  agricultural  interests  of  our 
country  going  forward  hand-in-hand,  as  they  should  go, 
supporting  each  other.     [Loud  applause.] 

I  know  that  there  is  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the 
means  by  which  this  is  to  be  accomplished.  One  man  says  : 
"  Tear  down  your  navigation  laws,  and  let  us  have  free  ships." 
Now,  I  am  opposed  to  that,  because  that  does  not  tend  to 
build  up  American  commerce.  I  do  not  believe  in  false 
trade-marks.  I  do  not  believe  that  buying  a  British  ship 
and  calling  her  an  American  ship  makes  her  an  American 
ship.  [Applause.]  I  believe  that,  this  very  day  and  hour, 
every  single  article  that  goes  into  the  manufacture  of  a  ship 
can  be  produced  and  made  as  well  here  as  in  any  spot  on 
this  earth.     Take  a  five  hundred  thousand  dollar   ship  re- 


78  JAMES   GILLESPIE    BLAINE 

presenting  a  tonnage  of,  say,  three  thousand  five  hundred 
tons.  Five  thousand  dollars  represents  the  cost  of  the  or- 
iginal raw  material,  and  four  hundred  and  ninety-five  thou- 
sand dollars  represents  the  value  of  the  labor  and  skill  to  be 
put  on  those  materials  by  American  hands.  I  say  that  I 
am  opposed  to  paying  that  four  hundred  and  ninety-five 
thousand  dollars  outside  of  this  country.     [Applause.] 

Just  so  long  as  this  country  fails  to  become,  or  delays  its 
arrival  at  the  position  of  a  great  and  triumphant  commer- 
cial nation,  just  so  long  it  is  defeating  the  ends  of  Provi- 
dence. [Applause.]  We  have  seventeen  thousand  miles 
of  coast-line  looking  toward  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa, 
giving  us  a  larger  sea  frontage  than  all  Europe,  beginning 
at  Archangel  and  running  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  and 
beyond  them  to  the  gates  of  Trebizond.  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  has  said  that  England  was  great  because  she  had 
the  best  business-stand  on  the  globe.  That  was  perhaps 
once  true,  but  it  is  true  no  longer.  To-day  the  best  busi- 
ness-stand is  changed,  and  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  United 
States  ;  and  your  great  imperial  city,  with  its  matchless 
commercial  connections  and  position,  and  its  magnificent 
harbor,  is  destined  to  be,  under  the  enterprise  and  guidance 
of  its  merchants,  what  London  has  dreamed  of,  but  never 
yet  has  realized.     [Loud  applause.! 


PAUL   BLOUET 

(MAX  O'REIvL) 


MONSIEUR  AND  MADAME 

[Speech  of  Paul  Blouet  [Max  O'Rell]  at  Ihc  aiimuil  Ladies'  Banquet  of 
the  Whitefriar's  Chib,  Loudon,  Knji^dand,  Ma}'  4,  1900.  Max  O'Rell 
acted  as  toast-master,  and  delivered  the  followinj:,^  s])cech  in  respondinj^ 
to  the  remarks  of  vSarah  Grand,  who  hail  spoken  to  the  tuast,  of  "  Mere 
Man."] 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — I  feel  somewhat  jealous 
of  my  brother,  Friar  Austin,  to-night,  lie  had  to  propose 
an  easy  toast.  I  think  I  could  have  attempted  the  praise  of 
woman,  whose  name  I  cannot  hear  without  wanting  to  take 
off  my  hat.  I  have  to  attempt  the  praise  of  man,  and  I  do 
not  feel  equal  to  it.  I  have  half  a  mind  to  let  the  case  go 
against  him,  but  I  consider  Madame  Sarah  Grand  has  let  us 
off  pretty  easy.  Wel4,  avc  are  not  quite  so  bad  as  we  are 
painted  sometimes.  I  believe  half  the  lies  that  arc  told 
about  men  are  not  true.  [Laughter.]  Wc  are  in  the  habit 
of  running  ourselves  down,  to  summon  women  to  our  help, 
but  we  do  not  believe  a  word  of  it.  We  are  very  mucli  like 
those  English  people  who  at  church  call  themselves  miserable 
sinners,  and  who  would  knock  down  on  the  spot  any  one  who 
would  take  them  at  their  word  on  coming  out  of  church. 
[Laughter.] 

Now,  the  attitude  of  men  towards  women  is  very  different, 
according  to  the  different  nations  to  which  they  belong. 
You  will  find  a  good  illustration  of  that  different  attitude  of 
men  towards  women  in  France,  in  England,  and  in  America, 
if  you  go  to  the  dining-rooms  of  their  iiotels.  You  go  to  the 
dining-room,  and  you  take,  if  you  can,  a  seat  near  the  en- 
trance door,  and  you  watch  the  arrival   of  the  couples,  and 

79 


8o  PAUL    BLOUET 

also  watch  them  as  they  cross  the  room  and  go  to  the  table 
that  is  assigned  to  them  by  the  head  waiter.  Now,  in  Eu- 
rope, you  would  find  a  very  polite  head  waiter,  who  invites 
you  to  go  in,  and  asks  you  where  you  will  sit,  but  in  Amer- 
ica the  head  waiter  is  a  most  magnificent  potentate  who  lies 
in  w^ait  for  you  at  the  door,  and  bids  you  to  follow  him 
sometimes  in  the  following  respectful  manner  beckoning, 
"  There."  [Laughter.]  And  you  have  got  to  do  it,  too. 
[Laughter.] 

I  travelled  six  times  in  America,  and  I  never  saw  a  man 
so  daring  as  not  to  sit  there.  [Laughter.]  In  the  tremen- 
dous hotels  of  the  large  cities,  where  you  have  to  go  to 
number  992  or  something  of  the  sort,  I  generally  got  a  little 
entertainment  out  of  the  head  waiter.  He  is  so  thoroughly 
persuaded  that  it  would  never  enter  my  head  not  to  follow 
him  he  will  never  look  round  to  see  if  I  am  there.  Why, 
he  knows  I  am  there,  but  I'm  not.  [Laughter.]  I  wait  my 
time,  and  when  he  has  got  to  the  end  I  am  sitting  down 
waiting  for  a  chance  to  be  left  alone.  He  says:  "You  cannot 
sit  here."  I  say :  "  Why  not  ?  What  is  the  matter  with  this 
seat?"  He  says  :  "  You  must  not  sit  there."  I  say:  "I 
don't  want  a  constitutional  walk  ;  don't  bother,  I'm  all  right." 
Once,  indeed,  after  an  article  in  the  "  North  American 
Review  " — for  your  head  waiter  in  America  reads  reviews — a 
head  waiter  told  me  to  sit  where  I  pleased.  I  said  :  "  Now, 
wait  a  minute,  give  me  time  to  realize  that ;  do  I  understand 
that  in  this  hotel  I  am  going  to  sit  where  I  like  ?"  He  said  : 
•'Certainly!"  He  was  in  earnest.  I  said  :  "  I  should  like  to 
sit  over  there  at  that  table  near  the  window."  He  said  : 
"  All  right,  come  with  me."  When  I  came  out  there  were 
some  newspaper  people  in  the  hotel  waiting  for  me,  and  it 
was  reported  in  half  a  column  in  one  of  the  papers,  with  one 
of  those  charming  headlines  which  are  so  characteristic  of 
American  journalism,  "  Max  sits  where  he  likes  !  "  [Laugh- 
ter.] Well,  I  said,  you  go  to  the  dining-room,  you  take  your 
seat,  and  you  watch  the  arrival  of  the  couples,  and  you  will 
know  the  position  of  men.  In  France  Monsieur  and  Ma- 
dame come  in  together  abreast,  as  a  rule  arm  in  arm.  They 
look  pleasant,  smile,  and  talk  to  each  other.  They  smile  at 
each  other,  even  though  married.      [Laughter.] 

In  England,  in  the  same  class  of  hotel,  John    Bull  comes 


MONSIEUR   AND    MADAME  8l 

in  first.  He  does  not  look  happy.  John  Bull  loves  privacy. 
He  does  not  like  to  be  obliged  to  eat  in  the  presence  of  lots 
of  people  who  have  not  been  introduced  to  him,  and  he 
thinks  it  very  hard  he  should  not  have  the  whole  dining- 
room  to  himself.  That  man,  though,  mind  you,  in  his  own 
house  undoubtedly  the  most  hospitable,  the  most  kind,  the 
most  considerate  of  hosts  in  the  world,  that  man  in  the 
dining-room  of  a  hotel  always  comes  in  with  a  frown.  He 
does  not  like  it,  he  grumbles,  and  mild  and  demure,  with 
her  hands  hanging  down,  modestly  follows  Mrs.  John  Bull. 
But  in  America,  behold  the  arrival  of  Mrs.  Jonathan. 
[Laughter.]  Behold  her  triumphant  entry,  pulling  Jon- 
athan behind!  Well,  I  like  my  own  country,  and  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  the  proper  and  right  way  is  the  French. 
[Applause.]  Ladies,  you  know  all  our  shortcomings.  Our 
hearts  are  exposed  ever  since  the  rib  which  covered  them 
was  taken  off.  Yet  we  ask  you  kindly  to  allow  us  to  go 
through  life  with  you,  like  the  French,  arm  in  arm,  in  good 
friendship  and  camaraderie.     [Applause.] 


BENJAMIN  HARRIS  BREWSTER 


BENCH  AND  BAR  OF  PENNSYLVANIA 

[Speech  of  Judge  Benjamin  H.  Brewster  at  the  dinner  given  by  the 
Philadelphia  Bar,  December  19,  1872,  to  Judge  James  Thompson,  on  his 
retirement  from  the  Bench.  The  Chairman,  Peter  McCall,  proposed 
the  toast:  "  Bench  and  Bar  of  Pennsylvania,"  associating  with  it  these 
lines  from  Sidney  Smith:  "In  all  the  civil  difficulties  of  life  men 
depend  upon  your  exercised  faculties,  and  your  spotless  integrity  ;  and 
they  require  of  you  an  elevation  above  all  that  is  mean,  and  a  spirit 
which  will  never  yield  when  it  ought  not  to  yield.  As  long  as  your  pro- 
fession retains  its  character  for  learning,  the  right  will  be  defended  ;  as 
long  as  it  preserves  itself  pure  and  incorruptible,  on  other  occasions  not 
connected  with  3'our  profession,  those  talents  will  never  be  used  to  the 
public  injury,  which  were  intended  and  nurtured  for  the  public  good."] 

Mr.  President: — You  must  let  me  complain  of  this  sud- 
den distinction  you  have  thrust  upon  me.  It  is  but  two 
minutes  ago  I  was  told  that  I  must  answer  to  this  toast. 
The  honors  of  this  important  occasion  have  been  very  wisely 
distributed  by  the  gentlemen  who  have  kindly  undertaken 
to  arrange  all  for  us  ;  but  it  seems  that  on  me  they  have 
imposed  the  burthens.  Before  I  begin  the  few  words  I 
shall  say,  I  will  arraign  these  gentlemen  and  ask  them  in 
your  presence,  what  is  it  that  I  have  done  to  be  so  punished, 
when  others  have  soft  and  easy  chairs  of  honor?  In  the 
first  place  they  have  deputed  me  to  preside  over  one  of  these 
tables — and  such  a  table  !  of  lawless  larks  !  no  man  ever 
undertook  to  regulate.  Over  this  table  they  have  put  me 
to  preside — and  such  a  table  !  as  I  have  before  said — all  the 
wild  rakes  and  bold  blades  of  the  Bar  are  here  !  [Laugh- 
ter.] What  man  could  hold  them  with  their  exuberant 
spirits,  in  due  subjection  to  dignified  decorum?  Not  I  ! 
Why,  sir,  this  reminds  me  of  an  event  that  once  happened 

82 


BENCH    AND    BAR   OF    PENNSYLVANIA  «3 

in  England,  which  I  will  here  relate,  and  you  may  apply  it 
if  you  care  : 

When  the  French  invasion  was  threatened,  and  all  Eng- 
land was  terrified,  the  lawyers  from  the  temple  and  other 
Inns  of  Court  in  London,  formed  themselves  into  a  regiment, 
and  Lord  Erskine,  then  the  Honorable  Mr.  Erskine,  was 
created  their  Colonel.  When  they  were  reviewed  in  Hyde 
Park  by  King  George  the  Third,  His  Majesty  was  so  well 
pleased  with  their  appearance,  that  he  said  to  Mr.  Erskine  : 
"Colonel!  what  name  is  your  regiment  called  by?"  To 
which  Colonel  Erskine,  saluting  the  king,  promptly  re- 
sponded :  "  The  Devil's  Own  !  your  Majesty  !  "  So  now, 
sir,  if  you  ask  me  what  table  I  command,  I  shall  call  you  all 
to  witness  that  truly  do  I  command  the  Devil's  own  !  look- 
ing at  this  rollicking  set  over  whom  I  preside,  and  whom  I 
have  vainly  striven  to  control.  [Laughter  and  cheers.] 
They  have  no  sense  of  obedience  for  me,  nor  have  they  any 
fear  of  my  friends.  Judge  Pierce  and  Judge  Finletter,  both 
of  whom  flank  me,  and  both  of  whom  strive  in  vain  to  help 
me.  I  sent  them  word  a  moment  since  I  Avould  have  to 
open  a  Court  of  Quarter  Sessions  and  bind  them  all  over  to 
keep  the  peace,  and  pointed  to  the  judges  I  had  with  me. 
This  had  no  terror  for  them,  but  like  true  dare-devils  as  they 
are,  one  and  all  they  defied  me.  [Cheers.]  Hear  them,  sir, 
now  !  Hear  how  with  exultant  shouts  they  jeer  at  me  and 
my  authority !  Gentlemen  of  the  Committee,  have  I  not  a 
right  to  complain  ? 

And  now  they  thrust  me  unprepared  into  the  place  that 
was  to  have  been  filled  by  our  honored  and  dear  friend,  the 
former  Chief  Justice  Black.  This  last  imposition  is  the 
most  grievous  of  the  trio  ;  for  knowing  as  we  all  do,  the 
great  merits  of  Judge  Black  as  a  speaker,  and  disappointed 
as  we  are  at  his  absence — for  that  which  he  would  have  said 
would  have  been  the  glory  of  this  occasion — any  one  will 
readily  see  how  hard  a  thing  it  is  to  ask  me  thus  to  take  his 
place. 

In  a  loose  and  shambling  way  I  must  stand  here  uttering 
random  words,  when,  had  he  spoken,  there  would  have  been 
floods  of  majestic  eloquence,  and  of  refined  and  exalted 
thoughts.  I  am  deputed  to  speak  forjudge  Black.  That  I 
cannot  do,  and  I  defy  the  wit   of  man   to  do  it  as  he  can. 


84  BENJAMIN    HARRIS   BREWSTER 

The  toast  assigned  to  him  is  "  The  Bar  of  Pennsylvania." 
With  what  splendor  of  rhetoric  and  what  variety  of  knowl- 
edge could  he  not  treat  of  this  subject.  I  can  fancy,  for 
awhile,  how  with  rapture  and  delight  you  would  have  hung 
upon  his  glowing,  sonorous  periods,  and  the  wealth  of  in- 
formation and  instructive  reminiscences  he  would  pour  out 
before  us.  I  am  daunted  at  the  very  thought.  At  the 
threshold  of  my  remarks,  I  stand  in  awe  of  his  great  name, 
and  the  recollection  of  his  great  powers.  Bear  with  me, 
then.  The  Bar  of  this  State,  from  its  earliest  history,  has 
been  filled  with  great  names.  Let  me,  in  this  off-hand  way, 
recall  a  few  of  them.  In  the  interior  we  had  Wilkins,  and 
Ross,  and  Baldwin,  and  Duncan,  and  Watts,  and  Sitgreaves  ; 
and,  here  in  Philadelphia,  we  had  a  perfect  constellation 
of  men  who  have  made  the  Philadelphia  Bar  illustrious 
throughout  the  world. 

In  the  beginning  we  must  not  forget  that  Philadelphia 
was  the  capital  of  the  whole  country.  In  provincial  times  it 
was  the  greatest  of  colonial  cities.  The  first  lawyers  we  ever 
had  were  bred  in  the  Temple,  and  came  across  the  seas  to 
establish  themselves  here.  They  had  walked  in  those  ways 
trodden  by  the  "  Benchers,"  so  quaintly,  so  feelingly  de- 
scribed by  Charles  Lamb.  Like  him,  they  too  had  known 
a  Thomas  Coventry  "  whose  gait  was  peremptory  and  path- 
keeping — whose  step  was  massive  and  elephantine,"  and 
they  had  seen  Lord  Hardwicke  and  Northington  and  Ryder, 
Willes  and  Macclesfield  and  Wilmot  and  Camden  and  Mans- 
field, and  they  had  heard  the  great  leaders  of  those  days,  and 
learned  their  lessons  at  their  feet,  and  they  had  brought  with 
them  the  knowledge  of  principle  and  practice  from  Westmin- 
ster Hall,  and  hence  it  was  that  in  the  beginning  we  started 
right,  with  a  solid  foundation  of  professional  character  and 
duty.  Here  the  Government  of  the  United  States  first  saw 
the  light  of  day,  and  here  all  the  great  questions  of  constitu- 
tional law  were  first  discussed  and  considered,  and  these 
questions  were  handled  by  such  men  as  Jared  Ingersoll,  Mr. 
Lewis,  Mr.  Tilghman,  Mr.  Rawle  and  Mr.  Dallas.  Those 
were  the  men  that  gave  name  and  fame  to  our  Bar.  Heaven 
send  we  may  never  lose  it  !  They  established  a  standard  by 
which  we  have  been  obliged  to  live.  How  delightfully  Mr. 
Binny  describes  these  gentlemen,  and   the  history  of  their 


BP:NCH    and    bar    of    I'KNNSYLVANIA  85 

career.  And  he,  too,  thank  Heaven,  is  with  us  yet  !  Can 
I  say  more  of  those  men  and  of  their  works  than  is  said  by 
Lord  Mansfield  himself  in  a  letter  to  Chief  Justice  McKeaii, 
in  which  he  acknowledges  the  receipt  of  Dallas'  Reports,  in 
these  words  : 

"Sir  :  I  am  not  able  to  write  with  my  own  hand,  and  must,  t}icrc- 
fore,  beg  leave  to  use  another  to  acknowledge  the  honor  you  have  done 
me,  by  your  most  obliging  and  elegant  letter,  and  the  sending  me  Dallas' 
Reports. 

"  I  am  not  able  to  read  myself,  but  I  have  heard  tliem  read  with  mucli 
pleasure.  They  do  credit  to  the  Court,  the  Bar,  and  the  Reporter  ;  they 
show  readiness  in  practice,  liberality  in  principle,  strong  reason  and  legal 
learning  ;   the  method,  too,  is  clear,  and  the  language  plain. 

"I  undergo  the  weight  of  age,  and  other  bodily  infirmities,  but  blessed 
be  God  !   my  mind  is  cheerful,  and  still  open   to  that  sensibilitj'  which 
praise  from  the  praiseworthy  never  fail  to  give.     Lans,  laudari  a  ie. 
"  Accept  the  thanks  of,  sir,  your  most  obliged 

"  And  obedient  humble  servant, 
"Mansfield." 

And  it  is  over  this  tribunal  made  historic  by  these  beauti- 
ful words  of  commendation  that  our  Chief  Justice  Thomp- 
son has  presided  with  so  much  merit  and  dignity.  And  it 
is  to  honor  him  and  commemorate  his  career  that  we  have 
gathered  in  here  to-night,  and  thus  cheer  him  with  our 
words  of  applause  as  he  lays  down  his  great  office.  Per- 
sonal friendship  and  official  relation  with  him  both  call  on 
me  to  testify  how  much  we  all  owe  him. 

But,  gentlemen,  I  must  be  done,  others  are  to  follow — 
others  whose  efforts  are  worthy  of  applause,  and  whose  care- 
ful preparation  will  better  fit  them  to  invite  your  attention 
than  these  "  wild  and  whirling  words  "  of  mine. 

For  the  compliment  bestowed  in  choosing  me  to  fill  the 
post  of  difficulty,  I  thank  you  ;  but  for  the  greater  compli- 
ment in  thus  bearing  with  me  in  patience  as  I  talk"  pribbles 
and  prabbles,"  I  shall  never  cease  to  be  grateful.  [Ap- 
plause.] 


ISAAC   HILL   BROMLEY 


CONNECTICUT'S  TART  IN  THE   BUSINESS 

[Speech  of  Isaac  II.  Bromie}-,  of  the  New  York  "  Tribune,"  at  the 
S6ih  anniversary  dinner  of  the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New 
York,  December  22,  1891.  J.  Pierjiont  Morgan,  President  of  the  Society, 
was  in  the  chair.  Mr.  Bromley  .spoke  to  the  toast:  "Connecticut's 
Part  in  the  Business.'"] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — Notwithstanding 
all  that  has  been  said  at  this  table  for  the  last  eighty-six 
years  by  persons  who  pay  fifty  dollars  to  begin  with  and 
ten  dollars  annually  thereafter  for  the  privilege  of  treating 
the  transaction  with  levity,  I  cling  with  childlike  faith  to 
the  belief  that  there  actually  were  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and  that 
they  did  land.  [Laughter.]  I  believe  they  were  serious 
persons — no  one  can  doubt  it  who  has  seen  pictures  of  them 
in  public  places — and  I  hope  you  will  agree  with  me  when 
I  say  that  the  time  has  manifestly  now  arrived — Mass- 
achusetts having  elected  a  Democratic  Governor  two  years 
in  succession — when  we  should  begin  to  treat  them  seriously 
and  inquire  what  on  the  whole  they  were  driving  at. 
[Laughter.]  Let  us  consider  them  for  a  moment  as  historic 
personages:  real  folks  with  mud  on  their  boots  and  a  look 
of  earnest  waiting  for  the  dinner  horn,  instead  of  painted 
persons  on  a  canvas,  or  brass  heroes  on  a  horse  block  who 
never  did  a  square  day's  work  in  their  lives,  but  put  in 
their  time  leaning  on  a  gun  while  the  women  folks  did  the 
chores.     [Laughter.] 

The  Pilgrims  were  just  ordinary,  common  folk  ;  for  the 
most  part  lean,  lank,  hatchet-faced  and  slab-sided  ;  and  two 
hundred  and  seventy  years  ago  they  were  not  cheerful  per- 
sons to  live  with.  No  more  are  some  of  their  descendants 
now.     But  they  meant  business  from  the  word  go  ;  from  the 

86 


CONNECTICUT'S    PART    IN    THE    BUSINESS  87 

Plymouth    Rock   pullet    to    the    Plymouth    Rock    pants. 
[Laughter.] 

It  has  been  remarked  of  them,  on  one  or  two  occasions, 
that  they  builded  better  than  they  knew  ;  reference  being 
had  to  the  fact  that  whereas  they  came  over  here  for  the 
purpose  of  establishing  one  religion,  there  arc  now  within 
five  miles  of  Boston  something  like  five  hundred,  without 
including  recent  cleavages  and  new  inventions.  Taking  a 
broader  and  more  elevated  view,  we  may  safely  say  that 
they  builded  differently  from  what  they  knew.  It  is  not 
likely  that  they  foresaw  in  their  wildest  dreams  tlic  filling 
in  of  the  Back  Bay.  Had  they  projected  in  their  imagina- 
tions that  large  body  of  made  land  held  down  in  many  places 
by  bronze  specimens  of  mediaeval  and  wholly  evil  art,  it  is 
doubtful  if  they  would  have  come  ashore  ;  in  which  case  one 
cannot  help  inquiring  what  would  have  become  of  the  Sec- 
retary of  this  Society.     [Great  laughter.] 

Nor  could  they  have  conceived  of  the  enormous  improve- 
ment there  would  be  in  the  breeding  and  culture  of  the 
domestic  dog.  In  1620  in  the  neighborhood  of  Plymouth 
and  around  Massachusetts  Bay  there  was  but  one  variety  of 
dog,  and  that  one  of  so  furtive  and  elusive  a  character  that 
the  artist  who  photographed  the  scene  of  the  landing,  as 
shown  on  the  certificates  of  membership  of  this  Society, 
was  unable  to  secure  anything  but  his  bark  ;  which  was  on 
the  sea,  and  is  represented  at  anchor  in  the  engraving  about 
a  sixteenth  of  an  inch  from  Plymouth  Rock.  [Laughter.] 
To-day  more  than  a  hundred  varieties  of  dogs  of  the  most 
useful  and  ornamental  character  may  be  seen  on  Common- 
wealth Avenue  in  Boston,  attending  to  their  several  pur- 
suits under  the  superintendence  of  ladies  of  the  highest 
culture,  wearing  spectacles.     [Laughter.] 

Nor  could  the  Pilgrims  have  ever  dreamed  that  two  hundred 
and  seventy  years  from  the  day  of  their  landing  the  members 
of  the  different  trades  and  professions  in  Boston,  from  retail 
junk  dealers  up,  would  dine  together  every  Saturday,  and 
make  speeches  to  and  about  each  other  of  the  most  lofty 
and  ennobling  character.  Nor  that  the  thirst  for  precise  and 
accurate  information  concerning  the  entire  universe  would 
be  so  absorbing  as  to  fill  Tremont  Temple  during  the  Joseph 
Cook  season  with  entranced  audiences,  yearning  in  desire 


88  ISAAC    HILL    BROMLEY 

to  follow  Joseph  Cook,  like  a  sinking  star  beyond  the 
utmost  bounds  of  human  thought. 

It  is  not  likely  that  they  would  have  banished  Ann 
Hutchinson  so  abruptly,  if  they  could  have  foreseen  the 
organization,  in  less  than  three  hundred  years,  of  a  Ques- 
tion Club,  which  can  ask  more  questions  at  one  session 
concerning  the  operation  of  the  tariff  than  any  candidate 
for  office  can  answer  in  the  two  months  before  election. 
For  poor  old  Ann's  chief  trouble  was  an  inquiring  mind. 

They  builded,  indeed,  more  than  they  knew  and  differ- 
ently from  what  they  supposed.  William  Brewster  was  a 
man  of  stubborn  will ;  had  he  been  permitted  to  look  with 
prophetic  vision  down  the  ages — to  see  in  his  mind's  eye  the 
vast  accumulation  of  conflicting  religions,  the  numberless 
varieties  of  the  domestic  dog,  the  irregular  eruptions  of  Back 
Bay  art,  the  Saturday  dinners,  the  Cook  lectures  and  the 
Question  Club  of  to-day — he  might  not  have  wished  himself 
back  in  Scrooby,  but  he  certainly  would  have  stood  on  his 
head  in  the  Mayflower's  cabin, upset  by  the  prospect  and  torn 
with  conflicting  emotions.      [Laughter.] 

In  the  plaintive  warble  with  which  Dr.  Chauncey  Depew 
broke  his  long  silence  on  the  occasion  of  the  dinner  of  the 
St.  Nicholas  Society  at  the  opening  of  the  present  season 
[great  laughter],  he  is  reported  to  have  expressed  his  regret 
that  his  ancestors  who  settled  on  this  island  had  no  his- 
torian, except  Washington  Irving,  who  had  not  treated  the 
early  Dutch  with  the  seriousness  they  deserved.  In  this 
respect  he  thought  they  were  at  a  disadvantage  as  compared 
with  other  colonists,  whose  stories  had  been  told  by  sober- 
minded  writers  in  a  stately  and  dignified  style.  We  can 
well  understand  how  the  accuracy  of  Cotton  Mather  and  the 
veracity  of  Samuel  Peters  would  have  better  suited  the  Doc- 
tor's austere  taste  than  the  jocularity  of  Irving.  [Laughter.] 
But  Dr.  Depew,  who  was  not  without  early  educational  ad' 
vantages,  must  know  that  it  is  by  their  own  fault  that  the 
early  Dutch,  instead  of  marching  with  stately  tread  across 
the  historic  page,  go  limping  over  it  with  a  wooden  leg. 
For  it  is  well  authenticated  that  the  Brewsters  and  Brad- 
fords  and  the  rest  intended  to  settle  here  at  some  point  near 
the  Hudson  River,  but  the  early  Dutch  who  were  here 
before  them  bribed  the  pilot   of  the   Mayflower   to  tangle 


Connecticut's  part  in  the  business        89 

them  up  between  Cape  Cod  and  a  stern  and  rockbound 
coast.  That  is  the  way  the  early  Dutch  lost  all  the  good 
historians,     [Laughter.] 

Had  not  the  early  Dutch  bribed  the  pilot  of  the  May- 
flower, the  Pilgrim  Fathers  would  have  landed  on  Pot  Rock 
instead  of  Plymouth  Rock,  and  Bradford  or  Winslow,  or 
Winthrop  or  Cotton  Mather  would  have  written  Knicker- 
bocker's History  of  New  York;  but  the  Dutch  Avould  not 
have  cut  so  much  of  a  figure  in  it.  The  "stern  and  rock- 
bound  coast"  of  Mrs.  Hemans  would  have  been  different, 
and  the  inestimable  boon  shortly  afterward  conferred  upon 
earth's  stricken  ones  would  have  been  known  as  Helleate 
Elixir  instead  of  New  England  Rum.     [Great  laughter.] 

The  Pilgrim  Fathers  never  lacked  for  historians.  They 
were  not  the  Fletcher  of  Saltoun  sort  of  men,  who  if  they 
could  but  make  the  ballads  of  a  nation  cared  not  who  made 
the  laws  ;  they  were  rather  of  the  type  of  the  modern  news- 
paper man  who  cares  not  who  throws  the  bomb  if  he  only 
gets  the  "  scoop."  [Laughter.]  They  kept  diaries,  and 
when  they  said  anything  definite  about  the  designs  of 
Providence — which  they  were  always  doing — somebody 
made  a  memorandum  of  it  ;  partly  for  the  benefit  of  the 
historian,  but  chiefly  for  the  guidance  of  Providence. 
[Much  laughter.]  It  was  also  the  habit  of  the  Pilgrim 
Father  when  he  had  said  anything  final  and  conclusive  about 
election,  predestination,  foreordination  or  whispering  in 
meeting,  to  go  immediately  and  sit  for  his  picture  before 
he  lost  the  expression.  The  result  was  that  the  historians 
■ — and  the  woods  round  Massachusetts  Bay  have  always 
been  full  of  them — not  only  had  down  fine  what  the  Pil- 
grim Father  said,  but  a  picture  of  him  while  he  Avas  saying 
it.  That  is  the  reason  why  the  histories  of  New  England 
are  so  full ;  also  why  they  are  chiefly  confined  to  what  hap- 
pened around  Massachusetts  Bay.  There  were  other  lo- 
calities in  New  England,  to  be  sure,  places  where  persons 
who  had  migrated  from  round  the  Bay  were  saying  and 
doing  things  which  turned  out  to  be  worth  while  ;  but  they 
had  no  shorthand  writers  or  portrait-painters  and  kept  but 
few  diaries,  so  the  materials  for  their  story  are  more  scanty, 
and  they  have  not  figured  so  largely  in  spoken  speeches  or 
printed  books. 


90  ISAAC    HILL    BROMLEY 

Perhaps  another  reason  why  the  attention  of  the  world 
has  been  so  focussed  upon  Massachusetts  is  that  its  vowel 
sounds  lend  themselves  so  readily  to  the  uses  of  the  orator 
and  rhetorician.  There's  such  a  long  and  impressive  roll 
to  the  words  "The  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,"  that 
the  citizen  when  he  hears  it  at  the  end  of  a  Thanksgiving 
proclamation  stretches  out  at  least  two  inches  longer  in  his 
pew,  and  thanks  God  for  having  been  born  there  instead  of 
in  Connecticut  or  Rhode  Island.  Since  Mr.  Webster,  in  a 
burst  of  admiration  for  the  State  which  he  adorned  by  his 
genius  and  enriched  by  his  promissory  notes  [much  laugh- 
ter], said,  "There  she  stands!  Look  at  her!"  mankind 
has  been  engaged  in  the  contemplation  of  that  tableau 
as  representing  all  there  was  of  New  England.  Only 
once  in  a  while  a  modest  voice  has  spoken  from  the  sister- 
hood of  New  England  States,  saying:  "We,  too,  are  here. 
[Laughter  and  applause.] 

The  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  people  started  in,  as 
we  all  know,  to  establish  religious  freedom.  Between  1620 
and  1632  they  had  so  far  succeeded  that  nobody  had  any 
voice  in  the  direction  of  civil  affairs  except  church  members, 
and  among  these,  religious  freedom  had  found  so  firm  a 
footing  that  any  person  who  believed  as  they  did  was  at 
perfect  liberty  to  say  so.  [Great  laughter.]  Li  1632  there 
was  an  influx  of  new  colonists  under  the  lead  of  Thomas 
Hooker  and  Samuel  Stone,  who  settled  in  Dorchester, 
Watertown  and  Newtown.  These  people  had  views  of  their 
own  on  several  questions,  and  especially  upon  that  rather 
important  one  of  the  separation  of  Church  from  State, 
which  afterward  exercised  so  potent  an  influence  in  the 
organization  of  civil  government  in  America.  They  were 
not  disputatious  or  quarrelsome — Cotton  Mather  called 
them  "  the  judicious  Christians  " — but  they  soon  saw  that 
the  differences  upon  this  very  vital  and  fundamental  ques- 
tion would  be  fatal  to  the  peace  of  the  community  ;  so  in 
1634  they  applied  to  the  General  Court  for  "  liberty  to  re- 
move." It  took  the  General  Court  a  year  to  bring  itself  to 
grant  the  request,  so  strong  was  the  desire  of  that  body  to 
strengthen  and  enforce  upon  the  minds  of  the  new  colonists 
the  principle  of  religious  freedom. 

In  the  spring  of  1636  the  movement  of  "  judicious  Chris- 


CONNECTICUT'S    PART    IN    THE    BUSINESS  91 

tians  "   from  the    Bay  country   began,  which    has    been  in 
progress   in   varying  volume  ever  since,  the   last   authenti- 
cated case  having  occurred  in  October  of  the  present  vear 
The  Newtown  people,  to  the  number  of  a  hundred,  under 
the  lead  of  Hooker  and   Stone,  were   the   pioneers.     They 
settled  at  Windsor,  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut,  whither 
they  were  soon  followed  by  the  colonists  of  Dorchester  and 
Watertown,  so  that  the  original  population  of  the  three  Bay 
towns  was  practically  transferred  to  Windsor,  Hartford  and 
Wethersfield    by  the  spring  of   1637.      They  found    some 
very  early  Dutch  at  Hartford,  but,  the  hint  being  conveyed 
to  them   that  they  were  a  trifle  too  early,  they  retired  in 
good  order,  leaving  only  an   odor  of  profanity  and  a  name 
for  "  Dutch  Point."      [Laughter.] 

It  was  the  ''judicious  Christians  "of   these   three   towns 
who  erected  the  model  of  a  pure  Democracy,  then  unknown 
upon  which  the  American  Republic  was  built.     Not  in  the 
cabin  of  the   Mayflower,  where  the  "subjects  of  our  dread 
sovereign  Lord,  King  James,"  made  their  famous  covenant 
and  compact  ;  not  in  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony,  whose 
head  and  chief  had  said  he  did  not  conceive  that  God  had 
ever  ordained   democracy  as  a  fit  government   either  for 
Church  or  Commonwealth,  but  in   Pastor  Hooker's  study 
1,1  1638— in  the  sermon  preached  to  the  General  Court,  upon 
the  lines  of  which  the  Connecticut  Constitution  of  January 
1639,  was  formed— was  government  of  the  people,  for  the 
people  and  by  the  people  born  on  this   continent.     TGreat 
applause.] 

Here  was  the  beginning  of  the  first  democratic  common- 
wealth, the  first  formulated  assertion  of  the  people's  ricxht 
to  rule,  the  first  efl"ective  blow  at  class  privilege.  Here  was 
the  disseverance  of  Church  and  State,  here  the  establish- 
ment of  town  government,  the  beginning  of  a  federated 
system,  the  inauguration  of  the  plan  and  model  upon  which 
the  constitutions  of  all  succeeding  commonwealths  and  of 
the  United  States,  were  formed.     [Appkuse.] 

The  first  proceeding  of  the  General  Court  organized  by 
these  "judicious  Christians"  was  to  take  decisive  action 
in  the  matter  of  the  Indian  disturbances,  which  the  parent 
colony  had  been  "  puttering  with,"  and  only  aggravatin^r 
for  a  year  or  two  previous.     The  Connecticut  General  Cou?t 


92  ISAAC    HILL    BROMLEY 

formally  declared  war  against  the  Pequots  on  May  i  ;  on 
May  lO  Captain  John  Mason  was  on  the  march  with  his 
small  force,  and  in  three  weeks'  time  he  had  settled  the 
whole  business,  made  an  end  of  the  Pequot  tribe,  and  given 
to  New  England  forty  years  of  peace.  This  would  seem 
to  be  an  important  transaction.  But,  except  as  John  Mason 
told  the  story  himself,  in  a  modest  and  unheroic  way,  some 
years  afterward,  it  is  almost  unrecorded.  The  history  of 
that  period  deals  chiefly  with  the  hero  who  shoved  Thomas 
Morton  out  of  the  country  for  disturbing  the  Puritan  peace, 
and  killed  two  or  three  bad  Indians  in  a  personal  encounter. 
Miles  Standish  lived  among  people  who  wrote  history : 
John  Mason  among  those  who  made  it.     [Applause.] 

From  that  time  the  little  State  organized  by  the  "  judicious 
Christians  "  has  gone  on  doing  solid,  useful  work  in  the 
world.  Steadfast  without  bigotry,  brave  without  boasting, 
earnest  without  fanaticism,  positive  without  dogmatism,  her 
well-descended  sons  trace  back  their  lineage  with  pride  to 
the  "judicious  Christians  "  who  came  out  with  Hooker  and 
Stone  from  the  three  Bay  towns  in  1636.  The  word  which 
Napoleon  could  not  do  without  but  which  Wellington  never 
needed  does  not  bedizen  the  fair  pages  on  which  the  story 
of  Connecticut  is  told.  No  "  glories  "  flaunt  themselves 
along  that  simple  record  of  the  natural  and  orderly  growth 
and  progress  of  a  commonwealth  of  common  men.  The 
narrative  of  that  earlier  migration  when,  in  obedience  to  the 
command,  "  Get  thee  out  of  thy  country  and  from  thy 
kindred  and  from  thy  father's  house  unto  a  land  that  I  will 
show  thee,"  the  Father  of  the  Faithful  went  out  of  Ur  of 
the  Chaldees,  is  not  more  simply  told  than  the  story  of  the 
journey  of  Hooker  and  his  company  through  the  wilderness 
to  the  river.  They  were  workingmen — not  treading  any 
shining  path,  but  trudging  workday  fashion  to  day's  works 
in  the  world.  So  went  John  Mason  to  the  Pequot  War  ;  so 
hurried  Israel  Putnam  to  Bunker  Hill  ;  so  that  wise,  pains- 
taking, Lebanon  merchant,  Jonathan  Trumbull,  by  his  un- 
selfish devotion  and  tireless  activity  gathered  for  Washing- 
ton the  sinews  of  war  when  the  struggle  seemed  hopeless  ; 
so  in  every  crisis  and  at  every  high  point  in  history  for 
more  than  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  steady- 
going,  every-day  workingmen  of  the  first  democratic  com- 


CONNECTICUT'S   PART   IN   THE    BUSINESS  93 

monwealth  on  the  continent,  unknighted   and  unplumed, 
unmoved   by  aught  but  sense  of  duty,  have  stood   in  the 
ranks  and  done  days'  works  in  the  world.     [Great  applause.] 
Pardon  me  if,  in  the  glow  of  conscious  pride  which  such  a 
retrospect  awakens,  I  seem  to  take  but  a  local,  narrow  view. 
I  am  not  insensible  to  the  debt  which  Connecticut  and  the 
country  owe  to  the  Bay  Colony,  or  to  that  which  mankind 
owes  to  New  England  as  a  whole ;  but  there  are  some  of  us 
who  think  it  may  not  be  amiss,  upon  an  occasion  like  this, 
to  recall  the  circumstance  that  the  commonwealth  founded 
by  the  "judicious  Christians  "  is  the  mother  of  democracy  • 
mother,  too,  of  States  and  statesmen,  of  scholars  and  phil- 
osophers, of  useful   inventions,  and,  above  all,  of  a  sturdy 
race  of  workingmen.     And  there  are  some  of  us  who  never 
cross  her  border-line  without  a  thrill  of  filial  tenderness  as 
we  say :   "  Thank  God,   this  is  our  mother."     [Long-con- 
tinued applause.] 


WILLIAM  JENNINGS  BRYAN 


AMERICA'S  MISSION 

[Speecli  of  William  J.  Bryan  delivered  at  the  Washington  Day  banquet 
given  by  the  Virginia  Democratic  Association  at  Washington,  D.  C, 
February  22,  1899.] 

Mr.  Chairman: — When  the  advocatesof  imperialism  find 
it  impossible  to  reconcile  a  colonial  policy  with  the  principles 
of  our  government  or  with  the  canons  of  morality ;  when 
they  are  unable  to  defend  it  upon  the  ground  of  religious 
duty  or  pecuniary  profit,  they  fall  back  in  helpless  despair 
upon  the  assertion  that  it  is  destiny.  "Suppose  it  does 
violate  the  constitution,"  they  say  ;  "  suppose  it  does  break 
all  the  commandments  ;  suppose  it  does  entail  upon  the 
nation  an  incalculable  expenditure  of  blood  and  money ;  it 
is  destiny  and  we  must  submit." 

The  people  have  not  voted  for  imperialism  ;  no  national 
convention  has  declared  for  it  ;  no  Congress  has  passed  upon 
it.  To  whom,  then,  has  the  future  been  revealed  ?  Whence 
this  voice  of  authority  ?  We  can  all  prophesy,  but  our 
prophecies  are  merely  guesses,  colored  by  our  hopes  and 
our  surroundings.  Man's  opinion  of  what  is  to  be  is  half 
wish  and  half  environment.  Avarice  paints  destiny  with  a 
dollar  mark  before  it,  militarism  equips  it  with  a  sword. 

He  is  the  best  prophet  who,  recognizing  the  omnipotence 
of  truth,  comprehends  most  clearly  the  great  forces  which 
are  working  out  the  progress,  not  of  one  party,  not  of  one 
nation,  but  of  the  human  race. 

History  is  replete  with  predictions  which  once  wore  the 
hue  of  destiny,  but  which  failed  of  fulfilment  because  those 
who  uttered  them  saw  too  small  an  arc  of  the  circle  of 
events.  When  Pharaoh  pursued  the  fleeing  Israelites  to 
the  edge  of  the  Red  Sea  he  was  confident  that  their  bond- 

94 


AMERICA'S    MISSION  95 

age  would  be  renewed    and    that   they  would    again    make 
bricks  without    straw,    but  destiny  was  not  revealed    until 
Moses  and  his  followers  reached  the  farther  shore    dry  shod 
and  the    waves   rolled    over    the  horses  and  chariots  of  the 
Egyptians.     When  Belshazzar,  on  the  last  night  of  his  reign, 
led  his  thousand  lords  into  the    Babylonian     banquet-hall 
and  sat  down  to  a  table  glittering  with  vessels  of  silver  and 
gold,  he  felt  sure  of  his  kingdom    for  many  years  to  come, 
but  destiny  was  not   revealed   until  the  hand  wrote  upon 
the  wall   those    awe-inspiring   words,   "  Mene,   Mene,  Tekel 
Upharsin."    When  Abderrahman  swept  northward  with  his 
conquering  hosts  his   imagination   saw  the  Crescent  trium- 
phant throughout   the   world,  but  destiny  was  not  revealed 
until  Charles  Martel  raised  the  cross  above  the  battle-field 
of  Tours  and  saved  Europe  from  the  sword  of  Mohamme- 
danism.    When  Napoleon  emerged  victorious  from  Maren- 
go, from  Ulm  and  from  Austerlitz,  he  thought  himself  the 
child  of  destiny,  but  destiny   was    not  revealed   until  Blii- 
cher's  forces  joined  the  army  of  Wellington  and  the   van- 
quished Corsican  began  his  melancholy    march    toward    St. 
Helena.     When  the  redcoats   of  George   the   Third    routed 
the  New  Englanders  at  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill  there 
arose  before  the  British  sovereign  visions  of  colonies  taxed 
without    representation    and    drained    of    their     wealth  by 
foreign-made  laws,  but  destiny  was  not  revealed  until  the 
surrender  of  Cornwallis  completed  the  work  begun  at  Inde- 
pendence  Hall  and   ushered  into   existence    a  government 
deriving  its  just  powers  from  the  consent   of  the  governed. 

We  have  reached  another  crisis.  The  ancient  doctrine  of 
imperialism,  banished  from  our  land  more  than  a  century 
ago,  has  recrossed  the  Atlantic  and  challenged  democracy 
to  mortal  combat  upon  American  soil. 

Whether  the  Spanish  war  shall  be  known  in  history  as  a 
war  for  liberty  or  as  a  war  of  conquest  ;  whether  the  prin- 
ciples of  self-government  shall  be  strengthened  or  aban- 
doned ;  whether  this  nation  shall  remain  a  homogeneous  re- 
public or  become  a  heterogeneous  empire — these  questions 
must  be  answered  by  the  American  people — when  they 
speak,  and  not  until  then,  will  destiny  be  revealed. 

Destiny  is  not  a  matter  of  chance,  it  is  a  matter  of  choice*, 
it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  waited  for,  it  is  a  thing  to  be  achieved. 


96  WILLIAM    JENNINGS    BRYAN 

No  one  can  see  the  end  from  the  beginning,  but  every  one 
can  make  his  course  an  honorable  one  from  beginning  to 
end,  by  adhering  to  the  right  under  all  circumstances. 
Whether  a  man  steals  much  or  little  may  depend  upon  his 
opportunities,  but  whether  he  steals  at  all  depends  upon  his 
own  volition. 

So  with  our  nation.  If  we  embark  upon  a  career  of  con- 
quest no  one  can  tell  how  many  islands  we  may  be  able  to 
seize  or  how  many  races  we  may  be  able  to  subjugate  ; 
neither  can  any  one  estimate  the  cost,  immediate  and  re- 
mote, to  the  nation's  purse  and  to  the  nation's  character, 
but  whether  we  shall  enter  upon  such  a  career  is  a  ques- 
tion which  the  people  have  a  right  to  decide  for  them- 
selves. 

Unexpected  events  may  retard  or  advance  the  nation's 
growth,  but  the  nation's  purpose  determines  its  destiny. 

What  is  the  nation's  purpose? 

The  main  purpose  of  the  founders  of  our  government 
was  to  secure  for  themselves  and  for  posterity  the  blessings 
of  liberty,  and  that  purpose  has  been  faithfully  followed  up 
to  this  time.  Our  statesmen  have  opposed  each  other  upon 
economic  questions,  but  they  have  agreed  in  defending  self- 
government  as  the  controlling  national  idea.  They  have 
quarreled  among  themselves  over  tariff  and  finance,  but  they 
have  been  united  in  their  opposition  to  an  entangling  al- 
liance with  any  European  power. 

Under  this  policy  our  nation  has  grown  in  numbers  and 
in  strength.  Under  this  policy  its  beneficent  influence  has 
encircled  the  globe.  Under  this  policy  the  taxpayers  have 
been  spared  the  burden  and  the  menace  of  a  large  military 
establishment  and  the  young  men  have  been  taught  the  arts 
of  peace  rather  than  the  science  of  war.  On  each  returning 
Fourth  of  July  ourpeople  have  met  to  celebrate  the  signing 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  ;  their  hearts  have  re- 
newed their  vows  to  free  institutions  and  their  voices  have 
praised  the  forefathers  whose  wisdom  and  courage  and  pa- 
triotism made  it  possible  for  each  succeeding  generation  to 
repeat  the  words  : — 

"  M3' country,   'tis  of  thee, 
Sweet  land  of  Liberty, 
Of  thee  I  sing." 


AMERICA'S    MISSION  97 

This  sentiment  was  well-nigh  universal  until  a  year  ago. 
It  was  to  this  sentiment  that  the  Cuban  insurgents  appealed  ; 
it  was  this  sentiment  that  impelled  our  people  to  enter  into 
the  war  with  Spain.  Have  the  people  so  changed  within  a 
few  short  months  that  they  are  now  willing  to  apologize  for 
the  War  of  the  Revolution  and  force  upon  the  Filipinos  the 
same  system  of  government  against  which  the  colonists  pro- 
tested with  fire  and  sword  ? 

The  hour  of  temptation  has  come,  but  temptationsdo  not 
destroy,  they  merely  test  the  strength  of  individuals  and 
nations  ;  they  are  stumbling  blocks  or  stepping-stones  ;  they 
lead  to  infamy  or  fame,  according  to  the  use  made  of  them. 

Benedict  Arnold  and  Ethan  Allen  served  together  in  the 
Continental  army  and  both  were  offered  British  gold.  Ar- 
nold yielded  to  the  temptation  and  made  his  name  a  syn- 
onym for  treason  ;  Allen  resisted  and  lives  in  the  affections 
of  his  countrymen. 

Our  nation  is  tempted  to  depart  from  its  "  standard  of 
morality"  and  adopt  a  policy  of  "criminal  aggression." 
But,  will  it  yield  ? 

If  I  mistake  not  the  sentiment  of  the  American  people 
they  will  spurn  the  bribe  of  imperialism,  and,  by  resisting 
temptation,  win  such  a  victory  as  has  not  been  won  since 
the  battle  of  Yorktown.  Let  it  be  written  of  the  United 
States:  Behold  a  republic  that  took  up  arms  to  aid  a 
neighboring  people,  struggling  to  be  free ;  a  republic  that, 
in  the  progress  of  the  war,  helped  distant  races  whose 
wrongs  were  not  in  contemplation  when  hostilities  began  ;  a 
republic  that,  when  peace  was  restored,  turned  a  deaf  ear  to 
the  clamorous  voice  of  greed  and  to  those  borne  down  by 
the  weight  of  a  foreign  yoke  spoke  the  welcome  words, 
Stand  up  ;  be  free — let  this  be  the  record  made  on  history's 
page  and  the  silent  example  of  this  republic,  true  to  its 
principles  in  the  hour  of  trial,  will  do  more  to  extend  the 
area  of  self-government  and  civilization  than  could  be  done 
by  all  the  wars  of  conquest  that  we  could  wage  in  a  genera- 
tion. 

The  forcible  annexation  of  the  Philippine  Islands  is  not 
necessary  to  make  the  United  States  a  world-power.  For 
over  ten  decades  our  nation  has  been  a  world-power.  Dur- 
ing its  brief  existence  it  has  exerted  upon  the  human  race 


9S  WILLIAM   JENNINGS    BRYAN 

an  influence  more  potent  for  good  than  all  the  other  nations 
of  the  earth  combined,  and  it  has  exerted  that  influence 
without  the  use  of  sword  or  Gatling  gun.  Mexico  and  the 
republics  of  Central  and  South  America  testify  to  the  benign 
influence  of  our  institutions,  while  Europe  and  Asia  give 
evidence  of  the  working  of  the  leaven  of  self-government. 
In  the  growth  of  democracy  we  observe  the  triumphant 
march  of  an  idea — an  idea  that  would  be  weighted  down 
rather  than  aided  by  the  armor  and  weapons  proffered  by 
imperialism. 

Much  has  been  said  of  late  about  Anglo-Saxon  civiliza- 
tion. Far  be  it  from  me  to  detract  from  the  service  rendered 
to  the  world  by  the  sturdy  race  whose  language  we  speak. 
The  union  of  the  Angle  and  the  Saxon  formed  a  new  and 
valuable  type,  but  the  process  of  race  evolution  was  not 
completed  when  the  Angle  and  the  Saxon  met.  A  still 
later  type  has  appeared  which  is  superior  to  any  which  has 
existed  heretofore ;  and  Avith  this  new  type  will  come  a 
higher  civilization  than  any  which  has  preceded  it.  Great 
has  been  the  Greek,  the  Latin,  the  Slav,  the  Celt,  the  Teuton 
and  the  Anglo-Saxon,  but  greater  than  any  of  these  is  the 
American,  in  whom  are  blended  the  virtues  of  them  all. 

Civil  and  religious  liberty,  universal  education  and  the 
right  to  participate,  directly  or  through  representatives 
chosen  by  himself,  in  all  the  affairs  of  government — these 
give  to  the  American  citizen  an  opportunity  and  an  inspira- 
tion which  can  be  found  nowhere  else. 

Standing  upon  the  vantage  ground  already  gained  the 
American  people  can  aspire  to  a  grander  destiny  than  has 
opened  before  any  other  race. 

Anglo-Saxon  civilization  has  taught  the  individual  to 
protect  his  own  rights  ;  American  civilization  will  teach  him 
to  respect  the  rights  of  others. 

Anglo-Saxon  civilization  has  taught  the  individual  to  take 
care  of  himself;  American  civilization,  proclaiming  the 
equality  of  all  before  the  law,  will  teach  him  that  his  own 
highest  good  requires  the  observance  of  the  commandment : 
*'  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself." 

Anglo-Saxon  civilization  has,  by  force  of  arms,  applied 
the  art  of  government  to  other  races  for  the  benefit  of  Anglo- 
Saxons  ;  American    civilization    will,  by   the  influence    of 


America's  mission  99 

example,  excite  in  other  races  a  desire  for  self-government 
and  a  determination  to  secure  it. 

Anglo-Saxon  civilization  has  carried  its  flag  to  every  clime 
and  defended  it  with  forts  and  garrisons  ;  American  civiliza- 
tion will  imprint  its  flag  upon  the  hearts  of  all  who  long  for 
freedom. 

To  American  civilization,  all  hail! 

"  Time's  noblest  offspring  is  the  last  I" 

[Long-continued  applause.] 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 


LOUIS    KOSSUTH 

[Address  in  ^vhicll  William  Cullcu  Bryant  introduced  Louis  Kossuth 
at  tlie  banquet  given  in  honor  of  the  Hungarian  patriot  by  the  Press  of 
New  York,  December  9,  1851.] 

Gentlemen  : — Before  announcing  the  third  regular  toast, 
which  is  a  very  short  one,  allow  me  to  say  a  few  words. 
Let  me  ask  you  to  imagine  that  the  contest  in  which  the 
United  States  asserted  their  independence  of  Great  Britain 
had  closed  in  disaster  and  defeat  ;  that  our  armies,  through 
treason  and  a  league  of  tyrants  against  us,  had  been  broken 
and  scattered  ;  that  the  great  men  who  led  them,  and  who 
swayed  our  councils,  our  Washington,  our  Franklin,  the 
vencriible  President  of  the  American  Congress,  and  their 
illustrious  associates,  had  been  driven  forth  as  exiles.  If 
there  had  existed  at  that  day,  in  any  part  of  the  civilized 
world,  a  powerful  republic,  with  institutions  resting  on  the 
same  foundations  of  liberty  which  our  own  countrymen 
sought  to  establish,  would  there  have  been  in  that  republic 
any  hospitality  too  cordial,  any  sympathy  too  deep,  any 
zeal  for  their  glorious  but  unfortunate  cause  too  fervent  or 
too  active  to  be  shown  towards  these  illustrious  fugitives? 
Gentlemen,  the  case  I  have  supposed  is  before  you.  The 
Washingtons,  the  Franklins  of  Hungary,  her  sages,  her  legis- 
lators, her  warriors,  expelled  by  a  far  worse  tyranny  than 
was  ever  endured  here,  are  wanderers  in  foreign  lands. 
Some  of  them  are  within  our  own  borders  ;  one  of  them  sits 
with  his  companions  as  our  guest  to-night,  and  we  must 
measure  the  duty  we  owe  them  by  the  same  standard  which 
we  would  have  had  history  apply,  if  our  ancestors  had  met 
with  a  fate  like  theirs. 


LOUIS    KOSSUTH  10 1 

I  have  compared  the  exiled  Hungarians  to  the  great  men 
of  our  own  history.  Difficulty,  my  brethren,  is  the  nurse  of 
greatness — a  harsh  nurse,  who  roughly  rocks  her  foster- 
children  into  strength  and  athletic  proportion.  The  mind, 
grappling  with  great  aims  and  wrestling  with  mighty  im- 
pediments, grows  by  a  certain  necessity  to  their  stature. 
Scarce  anything  so  convinces  me  of  the  capacity  of  the 
human  intellect  for  indefinite  expansion  in  the  different 
stages  of  its  being,  as  this  power  of  enlarging  itself  to  the 
height  and  compass  of  surrounding  emergencies.  These 
men  have  been  trained  to  greatness  by  a  quicker  and  surer 
method  than  a  peaceful  country  and  a  tranquil  period  can 
know. 

But  it  is  not  merely,  or  even  principall}',  for  their  personal 
ciualities  that  we  honor  them  ;  we  honor  them  for  the  cause 
in  which  they  so  gloriously  failed.  Great  issues  hung  upon 
that  cause,  and  great  interests  of  mankind  were  crushed  by 
its  downfall.  I  was  on  the  continent  of  Europe  when  the 
treason  of  Gorgey  laid  Hungary  bound  at  the  feet  of  the 
Czar.  Europe  was  at  that  time  in  the  midst  of  the  reaction  ; 
the  ebb  tide  was  rushing  violently  back,  sweeping  all  that 
the  friends  of  freedom  had  planned  into  the  black  bosom  of 
the  deep.  In  France  the  liberty  of  the  press  was  extinct ; 
Paris  was  in  a  state  of  siege  ;  the  soldiery  of  that  Republic 
had  just  quenched  in  blood  the  freedom  of  Rome  ;  Austria 
had  suppressed  liberty  in  northern  Italy  ;  absolutism  was 
restored  in  Prussia  ;  along  the  Rhine  and  its  tributaries,  and 
in  the  towns  and  villages  of  Wurtemberg  and  Bavaria,  troops, 
withdrawn  from  the  barracks  and  garrisons,  filled  the  streets 
and  kept  the  inhabitants  quiet  with  the  bayonet  at  their 
breasts.  Hungary,  at  that  moment,  alone  upheld — and 
upheld  with  a  firm  hand  and  dauntless  heart — the  blazing 
torch  of  liberty.  To  Hungary  were  turned  up  the  eyes,  to 
Hungary  clung  the  hopes  of  all  who  did  not  despair  of  the 
freedom  of  Europe. 

I  recollect  that,  while  the  armies  of  Russia  Avere  moving, 
like  a  tempest  from  the  north,  upon  the  Hungarian  host, 
the  progress  of  events  was  watched  with  the  deepest  solici- 
tude by  the  people  of  Germany.  I  was  at  that  time  in 
Munich,  the  splendid  capital  of  Bavaria.  The  Bavarians 
seemed  for  the  time  to  have  put  off  their  usual  character, 


102  WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT 

and  scrambled  for  the  daily  prints,  wet  from  the  press,  with 
such  eagerness  that  I  almost  thought  myself  in  America. 
The  news  of  the  catastrophe  at  last  arrived  ;  Gorgey  had 
betrayed  the  cause  of  Hungary,  and  yielded  to  the  demands 
of  the  Russians.  Immediately  a  funeral  gloom  settled,  like 
a  noonday  darkness,  upon  the  city.  I  heard  the  muttered 
exclamations  of  the  people  :  "  It  is  all  over:  the  last  hope 
of  European  liberty  is  gone  !  " 

Russia  did  not  misjudge.  If  she  had  allowed  Hungary  to 
become  independent  and  free,  the  reaction  in  favor  of  abso- 
lutism had  been  incomplete  ;  there  would  have  been  one 
perilous  example  of  successful  resistance  to  despotism  ;  in 
one  corner  of  Europe  a  flame  would  have  been  kept  alive,  at 
which  the  other  nations  might  have  rekindled  among  them- 
selves the  light  of  liberty.  Hungary  was  subdued  ;  but  does 
any  one,  who  hears  me,  believe  that  the  present  state  of 
things  in  Europe  will  last  ?  The  despots  themselves  scarce- 
ly believe  it ;  they  rule  in  constant  fear,  and,  made  cruel 
by  their  fears,  are  heaping  chain  on  chain  around  the  limbs 
of  their  subjects. 

They  are  hastening  the  event  they  dread.  Every  added 
shackle  galls  into  a  more  fiery  impatience  those  who  are 
condemned  to  wear  it.  I  look  with  mingled  hope  and 
horror  to  the  day — the  hope,  my  brethren,  predominates — a 
day  bloodier,  perhaps,  than  we  have  seen  since  the  wars  of 
Napoleon,  when  the  exasperated  nations  shall  snap  their 
chains  and  start  to  their  feet.  It  may  well  be  that  Hungary, 
made  less  patient  of  the  yoke  by  the  remembrance  of  her 
own  many  and  glorious  struggles  for  independence,  and 
better  fitted  than  other  nations,  by  the  peculiar  structure  of 
her  institutions,  for  founding  the  liberty  of  her  citizens  on 
a  rational  basis,  will  take  the  lead.  In  that  glorious  and 
hazardous  enterprise,  in  that  hour  of  her  sore  need  and 
peril,  I  hope  she  will  be  cheered  and  strengthened  with 
aid  from  this  side  the  Atlantic ;  aid  given,  not  with  a 
parsimonious  hand,  not  with  a  cowardly  and  selfish  appre- 
hension lest  we  should  not  err  on  the  safe  side — wisely,  of 
course, — I  care  not  with  how  broad  and  comprehensive  a 
regard  to  the  future — but  in  large,  generous,  effectual  meas- 
ure. 

And  you,  our  guest,  fearless,  eloquent,  large  of  heart  and 


A    BIRTHDAY   ADDRESS  10^ 

of  mind,  wliosc  one  thought  is  the  salvation  of  oppressed 
Hungary,  unfortunate,  but  undiscouraged,  struck  down  in 
the  battle  of  liberty,  but  great  in  defeat,  and  gathering 
strength  for  triumphs  to  conic,  receive  the  assurance  at  our 
hands,  that  in  this  great  attempt  of  man  to  repossess  himself 
of  the  rights  which  God  gave  him,  though  the  strife  be  waged 
under  a  distant  belt  of  longitude,  and  with  the  mightiest 
despotisms  of  the  world,  the  Press  of  America  will  take  part 
— zvi/l  take,  do  I  say? — already  takes  part  with  you  and 
your  countrymen. 

Enough  of  this;  I  will  detain  you  from  the  accents  to 
which  I  know  you  are  impatient  to  listen  only  just  long 
enough  to  pronounce  the  toast  of  the  evening  :  "  LOUIS 
Kossuth."    [Applause.] 


A  BIRTHDAY  ADDRESS 

[Address  delivered  by  William  Cullen  Bryant  on  the  occasion  of  the 
*'  Bryant  Festival ,"  a  celebration  held  in  honor  of  his  seventieth  birth- 
day by  the  Century  Association  of  New  York  City,  November  5,  1864. 
This  address  was  spoken  in  response  to  the  one  delivered  by  George 
Bancroft,  President  of  the  Association.] 

I  thank  you,  Mr.  President,  for  the  kind  words  you  have 
uttered,  and  I  thank  this  good-natured  company  for  having 
listened  to  them  with  so  many  tokens  of  assent  and  ap- 
probation. I  must  suppose,  however,  that  most  of  this 
approbation  was  bestowed  upon  the  orator  rather  than  upon 
his  subject.  He  who  has  brought  to  the  writing  of  our  nation- 
al history  a  genius  equal  to  the  vastness  of  the  subject,  has, 
of  course,  more  than  talent  enough  for  humbler  tastes.  I 
wonder  not,  therefore,  that  he  should  be  applauded  this 
evening  for  the  skill  he  has  shown  in  embellishing  a  barren 
topic. 

I  am  congratulated  on  having  completed  my  seventieth 
year.  Is  there  nothing  ambiguous,  Mr.  President,  in  such  a 
compliment  ?  To  be  congratulated  on  one's  senility  !  To 
be  congratulated  on  having  reached  that  stage  of  life  when 
the  bodily  and  mental  powers  pass  into  decline  and  decay  ! 


104  WILLIA^I    CULLEN    BRYANT 

*'  Lear"  is  made  by  Shakespeare  to  say  :  "  Age  is  unneces- 
sary." And  a  later  poet,  Dr.  Johnson,  expressed  the  same 
idea  in  one  of  his  sonorous  lines:  "Superfluous  lags  the 
veteran  on  the  stage." 

You  have  not  forgotten,  Mr.  President,  the  old  Greek 
saying:  "  Whom  the  gods  love  die  young  ;  "  nor  the  pas- 
sage in  Wordsworth  : — 

— "  oh,  sir,  the  good  die  first. 

And  they  whose  hearts  are  dry  as  summer  dust, 

Burn  to  the  socket." 

Much  has  been  said  of  the  wisdom  of  old  age.  Old  age  is 
wise,  I  grant,  for  itself,  but  not  wise  for  the  community.  It 
is  wise  in  declining  new  enterprises,  for  it  has  not  the  power 
nor  the  time  to  execute  them  ;  wise  in  shrinking  from  diffi- 
culty, for  it  has  not  the  strength  to  overcome  it  ;  wise  in 
avoiding  danger,  for  it  lacks  the  faculty  of  ready  and  swift 
action  by  which  dangers  are  parried  and  converted  into  ad- 
vantages. But  this  is  not  wisdom  for  mankind  at  large  by 
whom  new  enterprises  must  be  undertaken,  dangers  met,  and 
difficulties  surmounted.  What  a  world  would  this  be  if  it 
were  made  up  of  old  men — generation  succeeding  to  genera- 
tion of  hoary  ancients  who  had  but  half  a  dozen  years,  or 
perhaps  half  that  time,  to  live  !  What  new  work  of  good 
would  be  attempted  ?  What  existing  abuse  or  evil  correct- 
ed? What  strange  subjects  would  such  a  world  afford  for 
the  pencils  of  our  artists  ! — groups  of  superannuated  gray- 
beards  basking  in  the  sun,  through  the  long  days  of  spring, 
or  huddling  like  sheep  in  Avarm  corners  in  the  winter  time  ; 
houses  with  the  timbers  dropping  apart;  cities  in  ruins; 
roads  unwrought  and  impassable  ;  weedy  gardens  and  fields 
with  the  surface  feebly  scratched  to  put  in  a  scanty  harvest ; 
feeble  old  men  climbing  into  crazy  wagons,  perhaps  to  be 
run  away  with,  or  mounting  horses,  if  they  mounted  them 
at  all,  in  terror  of  being  hurled  from  their  backs  like  a  stone 
from  a  sling.  Well  it  is  that,  in  this  world  of  ours,  the  old 
men  are  but  a  very  small  minority. 

Ah,  Mr.  President,  if  we  could  but  stop  this  rushing  tide 
of  time  that  bears  us  so  swiftly  onward,  and  make  it  flow 
toward  its  source  ;  if  we  could  cause  the  shadow  to  turn  back 


A    BIRTHDAY   ADDRESS  I05 

on  the  dial-plate  !  I  see  before  me  many  excellent  friends 
of  mine  worthy  to  live  a  thousand  years,  on  whose  coun- 
tenances years  have  set  their  seal,  marking  them  with  the 
lines  of  thought  and  care,  and  causing  their  temples  to  glisten 
with  the  frosts  of  life's  autumn.  If  to  any  one  of  these  could 
be  restored  his  glorious  prime,  his  golden  youth,  with  its 
hyacinthine  locks,  its  smooth,  unwrinkled  brow,  its  fresh  and 
rounded  cheek,  its  pearly  and  perfect  teeth,  its  lustrous  eyes, 
its  light  and  agile  step,  its  frame  full  of  energy,  its  exulting 
spirits,  its  high  hopes,  its  generous  impulses — and  add  all 
these  to  the  experience  and  fixed  principles  of  mature  age — 
I  am  sure,  Mr.  President,  that  I  should  start  at  once  to  my 
feet,  and  propose  that,  in  commemoration  of  such  a  marvel, 
and  by  way  of  congratulating  our  friend  who  was  its  subject, 
we  should  hold  such  a  festivity  as  the  Century  has  never 
seen  nor  will  ever  see  again.  Eloquence  should  bring  its 
highest  tribute,  and  Art  its  fairest  decorations  to  grace  the 
festival.  The  most  skilful  musicians  should  be  here  with 
all  manner  of  instruments  of  music,  ancient  and  modern  ;we 
would  have  sackbut  and  trumpet  and  shawm,  and  damsels 
with  dulcimers,  and  a  modern  band  three  times  as  large  as 
the  one  that  now  plays  on  that  balcony.  But  why  dwell  on 
such  a  vain  dream,  since  it  is  only  by  passing  through  the 
dark  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  that  man  can  reach  his 
second  youth. 

I  have  read,  in  descriptions  of  the  Old  World,  of  the 
families  of  princes  and  barons,  coming  out  of  their  castles  to 
be  present  at  some  rustic  festivity,  such  as  a  wedding  of  one 
of  their  peasantry.  I  am  reminded  of  this  custom  by  the 
presence  of  many  literary  persons  of  eminence  in  these 
rooms,  and  I  thank  them  for  this  act  of  benevolence.  Yet 
I  miss  among  them  several  whom  I  wished,  rather  than  ven- 
tured to  hope,  that  I  should  meet  on  this  occasion.  I  miss 
my  old  friend  Dana,  who  gave  so  grandly  the  story  of  the 
Buccaneer  in  his  solemn  verses.  I  miss  Pierpont,  venerable  in 
years,  yet  vigorous  in  mind  and  body,  and  with  an  undimmed 
fancy  ;  and  him  whose  pages  are  wet  with  the  tears  of  maidens 
who  read  the  story  of  Evangeline  ;  and  the  author  of  Fanny 
and  the  Croakers,  no  less  renowned  for  the  fiery  spirit  which 
animates  his  Marcos  Bozzaris  [Fitz-Greene  Halleck]  ;  and 
him  to  whose  wit  we  owe  the  Bigelow  Papers,  who  has  made 


I06  WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT 

a  lowly  flower  of  the  Avayside  as  classical  as  the  rose  of  Ana- 
crcon  ;  and  the  Quaker  poet  whose  verses,  Quaker  as  he  is, 
stir  the  blood  like  the  voice  of  a  trumpet  calling  to  battle  ; 
and  the  poetess  of  Hartford  [Lydia  H.  Sigourney],  whose 
beautiful  lyrics  are  in  a  million  hands;  and  others,  whose 
names,  were  they  to  occur  to  me  here  as  in  my  study,  I  might 
accompany  with  the  mention  of  some  characteristic  merit. 
But  here  is  he  whose  aerial  verse  has  raised  the  little  insect 
of  our  fields,  making  its  murmuring  journey  from  flower  to 
flower,  the  humble-bee,  to  a  dignity  equal  to  that  of  Pindar's 
eagle  :  here  is  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table — author  of 
that  most  spirited  of  naval  lyrics,  beginning  with  the  line  : — 

"  Aye,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down  !  " 

Here,  too,  is  the  poet  [N.  P.  Willis]  who  told  in  pathetic 
verse  the  story  of  Jephtha's  daughter;  and  here  are  others, 
w^orthy  compeers  of  those  I  have  mentioned,  yet  greatly  my 
juniors,  in  the  brightness  of  whose  rising  fame  I  am  like  one 
who  has  carried  a  lantern  in  the  night,  and  who  perceives  that 
its  beams  are  no  longer  visible  in  the  glory  which  the  morning 
pours  around  him.  To  them  and  to  all  the  members  of  the 
Century,  allow  me,  Mr.  President,  to  offer  the  wish  that  they 
may  live  longer  than  I  have  done,  in  health  of  body  and  mind, 
and  in  the  same  contentment  and  serenity  of  spirit  which  has 
fallen  to  my  lot.  I  must  not  overlook  the  ladies  who  have 
deigned  tohonor  these  rooms  with  their  presence.  If  I  knew 
where,  amid  myrtle  bowers  and  flowers  that  never  wither, 
gushed  from  the  ground  the  fountain  of  perpetual  youth 
so  long  vainly  sought  by  the  first  Spanish  adventurers  on 
the  North  American  continent,  I  would  offer  to  the  lips  of 
every  one  of  them  a  beaker  of  its  fresh  and  sparkling  waters, 
and  bid  them  drink  unfading  bloom.  But  since  that  is 
not  to  be,  I  will  wish  what,  perhaps,  is  as  well,  and  what  some 
would  think  better,  that  the  same  kindness  of  heart,  which  has 
prompted  them  to  come  hither  to-night,  may  lend  a  beauty 
to  every  action  of  their  future  lives.  And  to  the  Century 
Club  itself — the  dear  old  Century  Club — to  whose  members 
I  owe  both  the  honors  and  the  embarrassments  of  this  oc- 
casion— to  that  association,  fortunate  in  having  possessed 
two  such  presidents  as  the  distinguished  historian  who  now 


THE     PRESS  107 

occupies  the  chair,  and  tlie  eminent  and  accomplished  schol- 
ar and  admirable  writer  [Gulian  C.  Verplanck]  who  preceded 
him,  I  offer  the  wish  that  it  may  endure,  not  only  for  the 
term  of  years  signified  by  its  name— not  for  one  century 
only,  but  for  ten  centuries — so  that  hereafter,  perhaps,  its 
members  may  discuss  the  question  whether  its  name  should 
not  be  changed  to  that  of  the  Club  of  a  Thousand  Years  ; 
and  that  these  may  be  centuries  of  peace  and  prosperity, 
from  which  its  members  may  look  back  to  this  period  of 
bloody  strife  as  to  a  frightful  dream  soon  chased  away  by 
the  beams  of  a  glorious  morning.     [Applause.] 


THE   PRESS 


[Speech  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  at  the  sixty-seventh  anniversary  ban- 
quet of  the  New  England  Society,  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  23, 
1872.  Elliot  C.  Cowden,  President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair,  and 
said:  "  I  now  give  you  the  sixth  regular  toast — 'The  Press.'  It  is  our 
privilege,  gentlemen,  to  have  with  us  this  evening  one  of  the  oldest  and 
most  eminent  of  American  journalists — a  gentleman  known  all  over  the 
world  as  a  scholar,  an  author,  and  a  poet  of  the  highest  rank — Mr.  Wil- 
liam Cullen  Bryant,  whom  I  now  have  the  honor  to  present  to  you."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gi:NTLEMEN: — The  subject  which 
has  been  assigned  to  me  this  evening  is  a  very  large  one, 
and  a  subject  that  has  many  ramifications.  I  shall  take 
care  to  despatch  it  in  a  very  few  words. 

In  looking  about  me  at  the  beginning  of  this  festival,  I 
perceived  a  small  sprinkling  of  eminent  individuals  of  the 
clergy.  Whether  any  of  them  are  here  now  ornot,  I  cannot 
say.  One  of  them — certainly  one  of  the  most  eminent — 
has  disappeared  ;  but  if  there  are  any  here,  will  they  permit 
me  to  ask  them,  why  it  is  that,  in  bearing  their  testimony 
against  the  sins  of  the  times,  they  have  never  taken  as  the 
text  for  one  of  their  discourses  that  passage  from  one  of  the 
Evangelists,  in  which  it  is  related  that  certain  persons  came 
to  the  Saviour  of  the  world  with  one  sick  of  the  palsy,  that 
he  might  be  healed.  And  then  it  states  that  they  were  un- 
able to  get  nigh  unto  that  exalted  personage  by  reason  of 
the  press.  [Laughter.]  In  some  respects  it  is  a  vehicle  of 
mischief,  and  what  an  opportunity  that  would  have  afforded 
the  clergy  to  inveigh  against  and  rebuke  wickedness  in  one 
of  the  strongest  of  its  strongholds  ;  to  rebuke  the  sacrifice 
of  truth  for  party  purposes  ;  for  the  suiDpression  of  truth ; 


I08  WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT 

for  the  contradiction  of  truth  ;  for  the  perversion  of  truth; 
for  the  deliberate  exaggeration  of  trifles  for  the  sake  of  pro- 
ducing astonishment  and  attracting  the  attention  of  readers; 
for  whitewashing  a  rogue  until  he  has  turned  out  as  spotless 
as  a  lily  ;  for  bespattering  with  dirt  an  honest  man  until  he 
is  as  black  as  the  ace  of  spades.  It  seems  to  me  that  some 
one  might  have  been  instructed  from  the  text  as  remark- 
able as  in  the  case  related  of  a  certain  English  divine  of 
more  than  a  century  ago, — two  centuries,  I  think — in  which 
he  took  for  his  text  the  remarkable  words  "  top  not  come 
down."  At  that  time  the  women  wore  top-knots  on  their 
heads,  and  he  took  those  four  disjointed  w^ords  from  the 
verse  in  the  Scripture,  "  Let  him  which  is  on  the  house-top 
not  come  down  to  take  anything  out  of  the  house."  On 
those  words,  "  top  not  come  down,"  he  made  a  most  power- 
ful discourse  against  the  prevailing  fashion. 

Perhaps  the  reason  of  this  may  be  that  many  of  the  cler- 
gy are  indebted  to  the  press,  and  perhaps  some  of  them  have 
presses  of  their  own.  Our  eloquent  friend  who  went  to 
England  to  condemn  the  London  mob,  and  did  it,  making 
the  many-headed  monster  ashamed  of  himself,  what  would 
he  do,  what  would  he  have  done  by  way  of  airing  his  lecture- 
room  talks  weekly  but  for  the  press  which  prints  the  "  Chris- 
tian Union?"  [Applause.]  What  would  other  clergymen 
do — eminent  men — to  secure  their  weekly  audience  if  they 
were  not  announced  by  the  press?  All  the  religious  papers 
at  present  have  articles  of  very  considerable  length  under 
the  names  of  w^ell-known  clergymen,  so  that  they  are  not 
only  preachers  but  journalists. 

But,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  the  triumphs  of  the 
press,  the  great  marvels  of  the  press,  are  not  produced  mere- 
ly by  the  newspaper  press,  nor  by  the  book  press,  important 
as  those  are.  There  are  other  provinces  in  which  the  press 
performs  a  work  of  great  usefulness  and  admirable  excellence. 
P^or  instance  :  here  is  a  rag,  a  worthless  rag  ;  I  might  toss  it 
upon  a  dung  heap  and  nobody  be  poorer  ;  but  let  the  press 
be  brought  to  act  upon  it  and  it  becomes  a  bank-note.  It 
transforms  that  rag  into  a  $5,  a  $10,  a  $50,  a  $100,  or  a 
$1,000  bank-note,  forming  a  part  of  the  currency  of  the  coun- 
try, as  good  a  currency  as  we  have  at  present,  and  as  good 
as  the  Government  will  give  us.     I  believe  there  are  some 


THE   PRESS  109 

members  of  the  Government  here,  and  I  hope  they  will  take 
pains  by  and  by  to  give  us  a  better.  [Applause.]  There  is  one 
triumph  of  the  press.     It  is  the  printing  press  that  does  this. 

Here  is  another.  An  eminent  artist,  a  man  of  genius,  a 
man  who  has  studied  carefully  his  vocation,  will  produce  a 
design  of  great  merit  after  long  toil ;  a  merit  that  is  instinct 
with  all  the  glow  of  genius.  He  hands  it  over  to  the  en- 
graver, and  the  engraver  toils  upon  it  for  months,  copies 
every  outline,  every  shade,  and  every  blade  of  light.  He 
evolves  everything  that  belongs  to  the  religion  of  labor,  the 
rights  of  labor.  The  work  of  the  engraver  would  be  lost  but 
for  the  printing  press.  The  printing  press,  brought  down 
upon  the  plain  white  sheet,  and  you  have  a  perfect  copy  of 
the  oriq-inal  desip-n,  and  thousands  and  thousands  of  them  are 
spread  over  the  country  for  the  wonder  and  admiration  of 
millions.     There  is  another  triumph  of  the  press. 

Here,  gentlemen,  is  a  letter.  There  is  nothing  written 
upon  it  except  the  address  of  the  person  to  whom  it  is  di- 
rected. I  go  and  put  it  in  the  post-office,  or  in  the  letter- 
box, and  the  postmaster  takes  it,  throws  it  aside,  and  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  But  let  me  put  upon  one  cor- 
ner of  that  letter  a  little  piece  of  paper  not  an  inch  square, 
which  the  press  has  stamped,  and  it  has  the  signet  royal  of 
the  Government  in  the  shape  of  the  head  of  Washington,  and 
which  at  once  makes  the  postmaster  my  obedient  servant. 
He  takes  it  with  reverence  in  the  post-office,  he  folds  it  in  a 
wrapper,  puts  it  in  a  bag,  delivers  it  to  a  carrier.  The  car- 
rier toils  with  it  over  mountain  and  valley,  through  forests 
and  across  rivers,  until  at  last  he  delivers  it  to  another  post- 
master, who  is  also  made  by  the  press  my  lackey,  and  he 
carefully  delivers  it  to  the  person  to  whom  it  is  directed. 
That  is  a  third  triumph  of  the  press. 

Now,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  what  would  the  world 
of  art  do  in  all  civilized  countries  but  for  this  aid  of  the 
press  ?  What  would  Wall  Street,  the  seat  of  exchanges  for 
the  western  hemisphere — that  great  mother  reservoir  of 
currency  for  this  part  of  the  world — but  for  its  aid  ?  What 
would  the  correspondence  of  this  country  between  its  own 
citizens  and  between  its  citizens  in  foreign  countries  do  but 
for  the  aid  of  the  printing  press?  Therefore,  Mr.  President, 
I  say  that  the  press  is  rightly  remembered  kmdly  and  hon- 
orably on  this  occasion.     [Applause.] 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN  BUTLER 


OUR  DEBT  TO    ENGLAND 

[Speech  of  Governor  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  at  a  banquet  given  by  the  city 
of  Boston,  at  the  Parker  House,  September  8,  1883,  to  the  "  visiting  rep- 
resentatives to  the  Foreign  and  Domestic  Exhibition, "  then  in  progress.] 

Mr.  Chairman  : — We  recognize  that  our  laws  come  from 
England  ;  that  her  common  law  is  the  law,  not  only  of  this 
State,  but  of  this  whole  country,  with  the  exception  of  a 
single  State.  The  common  law,  passed  by  no  parliament, 
passed  by  no  body  of  men,  the  growth  of  the  decisions  of  a 
thousand  judges  of  strong  common  sense,  yet  so  adapted  to 
the  wants  of  any  people  that  there  can  be  no  change  in 
the  situation  that  that  common  law,  the  gathered  wisdom 
of  1000  years,  does  not  cover  [applause] — that  we  owe  to 
England.     [Applause.] 

But  we  owe  more.  We  owe  the  sturdy  divinity  which 
came  over  here,  brought  by  the  confreres  of  Cromwell. 
We  owe  even  the  motto  upon  our  flag  to  one  of  those  stern 
Puritans  ;  but  more,  still  more  than  that,  we  owe  our  libera- 
tion to  England.  For  years  and  years,  until  it  was  debauched 
by  the  newspapers  [laughter],  we  spoke  better  English 
in  Massachusetts  than  was  spoken  on  earth.  And  why  ? 
What  was  the  book  of  our  fathers  best  known  and  most 
read  by  every  scholar,  little  and  great,  in  every  school  ? 
The  Old  and  New  Testaments,  good  old  English,  I  suppose 
you  will  agree,  the  English  of  James.  What  was  the  next 
book,  the  best  known  to  us  ?  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress," 
the  English  of  Bunyan,  clear  and  prim  old  Saxon,  without 
any  adulteration.  What  book,  then  ?  The  "  Paradise  Lost  " 
and  "  Paradise  Regained  "  of  John  Milton.  Good  English 
again,  and  then,  after  that,  they  still  further  drew  their  lan- 

IIO 


OUR    DEBT   TO    ENGLAND  HI 

guage  from  the  immortal  spirit,  and  from  the  hmgiiage  in 
which  the  highest  triumphs  of  Enghind  and  America  have 
been  achieved, — the  language  of  William  Shakespeare. 

But  to  go  still  further.  We  owe  to  our  English  extraction 
our  inventive  genius  and  talent,  so  that  you  see  in  America 
the  product  of  English  brain  transplanted  to  a  sunny  soil. 

Now,  then,  our  Commonwealth,  with  these  advantages, 
with  this  nurture,  what  is  she?  A  pattern  commonwealth, 
a  pattern  State,  an  exemplar,  in  every  idea,  of  freedom  reg- 
ulated by  law,  of  liberty  without  excess,  equal  and  just 
laws,  furnishing  the  United  States  of  America,  in  war  and 
peace,  with  the  best  ideas  upon  the  subject  of  government, 
and  on  the  subject  of  defending  the  government.  Our  sons 
look  upon  an  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  general  government 
as  the  first  and  highest  obligation  ;  next  to  that,  the  oath  of 
allegiance  to  our  State.  We  have  sent  our  sons  and  daugh- 
ters all  over  the  West.  We  are  going  to  send  more  of  them 
in  a  different  capacity  [laughter]  down  South,  and  have 
them  stay  there. 

And  who  shall  say  that  Massachusetts  has  lost  her  grip 
in  this  government?  We  are  not  as  many  in  proportion  as 
we  were,  but  the  most  powerful  of  all  explosives,  as  well 
as  all  medicines,  are  put  up  in  the  smallest  packages. 
[Laughter.]  We  can  take  care  of  ourselves  and  everybody 
else  that  wants  taking  care  of,  either  here  or  elsewhere. 
That  is  a  natural  boast,  and  I  have  a  right  to  boast  a  little 
when  I  am  at  home.  Besides,  I  want  the  Lord  Chief  Justice 
to  carry  back  to  England  the  remembrance  of  our  good 
qualities  in  this  State  and  country.     [Applause.] 


HENRY   C.   CALDWELL 


A  BLEND  OF  CAVALIER  AND  PURITAN 

[Speech  of  Judge  Henrj'  C.  Caldwell  at  the  eleventh  annual  dinner  of 
the  New  England  Society  of  St.  Louis,  December  21,  1S95.  The  Presi- 
dent, Elmer  B.  Adams,  occupied  the  chair,  and  said  in  introducing  Judge 
Caldwell  :  "  About  one  week  ago,  I  called  upon  a  distinguished  jurist,  a 
member  of  the  Federal  Court,  and  requested  him  to  be  present  this 
evening  as  the  guest  of  this  Society  and  help  us  out.  He  declined  per- 
emptorily. He  said  he  could  not  speak.  He  did  not  know  how  to 
speak  on  such  occasions  ;  he  had  not  anything  to  say  ;  it  was  useless  for 
him  to  try  and  that  he  must  decline.  I  urged  him  to  make  the  attempt 
and  suggested  this  fact  to  him  :  that  he  had  been  presiding  in  Court  for 
a  great  manj-  years,  and  had  been  calling  down  one  after  another  of  the 
lawyers  that  had  appeared  before  him  in  a  way  very  unpleasant  to  them  ; 
and  I  suggested  that  towards  the  close  of  the  evening,  it  would  very 
likely  be  found  that  man}'  of  those  present  had  been  telling  strange 
stories  about  the  Yankees,  turning  the  meeting  into  a  sort  of  mutual  ad- 
miration society  ;  and  that  I  thought  he  might,  in  perfect  consistency 
with  the  general  tenor  of  his  life,  call  us  down.  He  said  he  could  not 
do  anything  of  the  sort,  but  finally  I  over-persuaded  him,  and  only  on 
Friday  last  I  got  him  to  say  that  he  would  be  present  and  would  endeav- 
or to  call  us  down.  Now,  I  do  not  know  what  he  has  in  store  for  us, 
but  the  gentleman  I  allude  to  is  the  distinguished  jurist.  Judge  Caldwell, 
of  the  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals  of  the  United  States."] 

Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — An  after- 
dinner  speech  is  a  kind  of  intellectual  skirt-dancing  that  I 
know  nothing  about.  To  prevent  misapprehension,  I  will 
take  the  precaution  to  add  that  I  don't  know  anything 
about  any  kind  of  skirt-dancing. 

You  are  a  curious  people  up  here.  You  are  never  satisfied 
to  eat  your  dinner  in  peace  and  give  it  a  chance  to  digest. 
With  the  fact  fully  established  by  medical  science  that  dull, 
leaden  after-dinner  speeches  stop  the  process  of  digestion 
in  those  compelled  to  listen  and  are  the  source  of  most  of  the 
dyspepsia,  apoplexy  and  paralysis  that  affect  the  country, 

112 


A    BLEND    OF    CAVALIER   AND    PURITAN  II3 

you  still  go  right  along  inviting  these  deadly  maladies. 
Where  I  live  people  are  allowed  to  eat  their  dinners  in  peace 
and  give  them  a  chance  to  digest.  When  I  get  into  such 
a  box  as  this,  I  feel  like  the  Kentuckian.  There  is  a  moun- 
tain region  in  Kentucky  where  from  time  immemorial  it  has 
been  the  custom  of  the  people  to  gather  at  the  county  seat 
of  their  county  each  Saturday  and  have  fist-fights.  This 
was  an  amusement  witnessed  and  applauded  by  all,  includ- 
ing the  peace  officers.  After  the  construction  of  the  Cin- 
cinnati Southern  Road,  which  ran  through  one  of  these 
counties,  one  of  the  old-time  fighters  concluded  he  would 
go  out  and  see  something  of  the  world.  The  first  thing  he 
did  when  he  got  to  Cincinnati  was  to  fill  up  on  Cincinnati 
whiskey,  take  a  position  on  the  sidewalk  and  proceed  to 
knock  down,  every  passer-by  until  he  had  five  or  six  prone 
on  the  sidewalk.  The  minions  of  the  law  gathered  around 
him,  finally  succeeded  in  overpowering  him,  and  carried  him 
before  the  police  judge,  who  said  :  "■  Sixty  days  and  one 
hundred  dollars."  From  the  police  court  he  was  taken  to 
the  jail.  He  immediately  sent  for  a  lawyer.  WHien  his 
lawyer  came  he  told  him  what  he  had  been  doing  and 
begged  to  know  what  on  earth  they  had  put  him  in  jail  for. 
The  lawyer  explained  to  him  that  it  was  for  a  breach  of  the 
peace,  that  it  was  for  fighting,  whereat  the  Kentuckian  was 
profoundly  astonished,  and  said  to  his  lawyer  :  "  Mr.  Law- 
yer, for  God's  sake  get  me  out  of  here  so  I  can  go  back  to 
Kentucky,  where  I  can  fight  in  peace."     [Laughter.] 

When  I  fall  into  the  hands  of  one  of  these  despots  called 
toast-masters,  I  feel  like  the  old  darkey  down  in  Arkansas 
who  had  lost  four  wives.  After  he  had  lost  the  fourth  his 
pastor  called  on  him  and  asked  him  how  he  felt,  to  which 
he  responded:  "Well,  Brother  Johnson,  I  feel  like  I  was  in 
the  hands  of  an  all-wise  and  unscrupulous  Providence." 

I  have  no  business  here,  anyway.  I  am  not  a  New  Eng- 
lander,  but  very  far  removed  from  them.  Norse  on  one 
side  and  Scotch  on  the  other,  the  reason  that  I  am  a  dead 
failure  at  the  intellectual  skirt-dancing  is  apparent.  The 
Norse  in  me  is  too  stupid  to  make  that  kind  of  a  speech, 
and  the  Scotch  is  too  religious.  I  never  was  in  New  Eng- 
land but  once  in  my  life,  and  then  I  got  lost  in  the  laby- 
rinths of  Boston  and  had  to  give  a  man  a  dollar  to  take  me 


114  HENRY   C.    CALDWELL 

to  my  hotel,  and  I  was  not  drunk  either.  I  had  not  for- 
gotten the  name  of  my  hotel,  however,  and  I  was  that  much 
better  off  than  the  Colonel  from  Missouri  who  forgot  the 
name  of  the  suburb  near  Boston  he  wanted  to  go  to.  He 
said  to  the  hotel-clerk  :  "  It  runs  in  my  head — its  name  is 
something  like  Whiskey  Straight,  though  that  is  not  it  exact- 
ly." "  Oh,"  said  the  clerk,  "  I  know  ;  you  mean  Jamaica 
Plain."  "  Yes,"  said  the  Missouri  Colonel,  and  immediately 
ordered  two  whiskey  straights.     [Laughter.] 

The  ancestors  of  you  New  Englanders  came  over  in  the 
Mayflower,  and  you  seem  to  be  very  proud  of  the  fact,  but  I 
want  to  tell  you  that  the  ancestors  of  a  good  many  people 
of  my  native  State  are  a  long  way  ahead  of  yours,  for  they 
didn't  have  to  come  over  at  all.  They  were  always  here. 
As  compared  to  the  ancestors  of  Pocahontas,  your  ancestors 
are  mere  carpet-baggers. 

Undoubtedly  the  Puritan  was  a  grand  man.  He  was  a 
Christian  as  he  understood  Christianity.  Religion  was  a 
very  solemn  thing  with  him.  He  believed  that  much  feel- 
ing was  synonymous  with  sin.  Among  scenes  of  pleasure 
there  was  no  joy  in  his  smile,  and  in  the  contests  of  ambi- 
tion there  was  no  quicker  beat  to  his  pulse.  He  rather  en- 
dured than  enjoyed  life.  His  religion  was  so  solemn  that 
singing,  except  when  out  of  tune,  was  a  sin,  and  dancing  a 
device  of  the  devil.  A  tuning  fork  was  the  nearest  approach 
to  a  musical  instrument  he  could  tolerate.  He  was  infected 
with  that  curious  and  almost  incurable  infirmity,  infallibility. 
He  was  sure  of  his  creed,  and  a  man  who  is  sure  of  his  creed 
is  sure  of  his  own  infallibility.  The  consciousness  of  his  in- 
fallibility gave  him  splendid  moral  courage,  which  is  the  only 
kind  of  courage  that  elevates  our  character.  He  had,  in  a 
word,  the  courage  of  his  convictions.  This  splendid  moral 
courage,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  is  not  characteristic  of  all  his 
descendants.  We  have  the  humiliating  spectacle  to-day  of 
a  great,  rotund  New  Englander  frightened  into  silence,  and 
bowing  to  the  storm  like  a  Reed,  and  all  because  the  cloud 
has  a  silver  lining. 

The  New  Englander  of  to-day  is  much  more  tolerant  than 
his  ancestors.  He  has  learned  that  there  is  more  good  in 
bad  men  and  more  bad  in  good  men  than  his  Puritan  an- 
cestors dreamed  there  was.     But  while  the  Puritan  thought 


A    BLEND    OF   CAVALIER   AND    PURITAN  II5 

a  great  deal  about  the  next  world,  he  did  not  lose  interest 
in  this.  He  was  frugal  and  thrifty  and  never  mistook  his 
capital  for  his  income.  When  his  conscience  pricked  him 
for  owning  slaves,  he  quietly  unloaded  them  on  the  Virginia 
tobacco  planters  and  immediately  organized  an  abolition 
society  to  set  them  free,  expiating  the  sin  of  trafficking  in 
slaves  himself  by  freeing  the  slaves  of  others.     [Laughter.] 

He  worked  zealously  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen. 
He  had  the  happy  faculty  of  mingling  business  with  his  mis- 
sionary work,  and  when  he  sent  a  ship-load  of  5,000  casks 
of  New  England  rum  to  the  heathen  Africans,  he  sent  on 
the  same  vessel  a  missionary,  and  the  world  has  wondered 
ever  since  what  the  heathen  people  with  5,000  casks  of  New 
England  rum  wanted  with  so  much  missionary.  Though 
possessed  of  splendid  physical  courage,  he  preferred  to  carry 
his  point  rather  by  force  of  logic  than  by  force  of  arms.  He 
would  tell  the  truth  regardless  of  consequences.  "  I  called 
him  a  liar,"  said  one  of  them,  "and  he  knocked  me  down. 
I  am  not  the  first  man  who  has  been  knocked  down  for 
telling  the  truth,"  and  he  rejoiced  at  having  suffered  for 
truth's  sake.  But  his  descendants,  like  the  Chinaman,  have 
become  a  little  more  civilized,  and  it  is  not  perfectly  safe 
any  more  to  knock  one  of  them  down  or  call  him  a  liar. 

Their  present  idea  of  civilization  resembles  somewhat  that 
of  the  Colorado  miner.  An  American  citizen  who  believed 
every  man  had  a  right  to  do  as  he  pleased,  with  the  proviso 
that  every  man  did  not  include  a  negro  or  a  Chinaman, 
jumped  a  Chinaman's  mining  claim,  and  was  swiftly  and 
scientifically  shot  by  the  Chinaman.  The  miner's  friends 
gathered  around  his  dead  body  and  inspected  the  location 
of  the  wound,  which  was  in  a  vital  spot  and  produced  by  a 
big  bullet,  and  then  one  of  them  remarked  sadly,  "  Boys, 
them  damn  Mongolians  is  becoming  civilized."    [Laughter.] 

He  was  a  firm  believer  in  the  essential  prerequisite  to 
the  establishment  and  maintenance  of  a  republican  form  of 
government,  either  in  Church  or  State.  He  had  no  religious 
or  political  idols.  He  worshipped  God  alone  and  esteemed 
men  according  to  their  virtue.  With  him  all  nobility  was 
based  on  virtue.  He  proclaimed  that  the  nobility  based  on 
riches  or  heredity  was  spurious,  no  matter  what  antiquity  it 
might  boast.     A  republican  form  of  government  both  in 


Il6  HENRY   C.    CALDWELL 

Church  and  State  was  the  necessary  outgrowth  of  such 
beliefs.  A  cynic  has  said  of  him  that  he  was  entitled  to 
little  credit  for  his  virtues,  because  he  had  neither  money 
enough  to  be  extravagant,  nor  leisure  enough  to  be  dissi- 
pated. His  poverty  preserved  him  from  vice.  Well!  if 
poverty  were  a  test  of  virtue,  or  the  only  restraint  upon  vice 
in  these  days,  very  few  of  his  descendants  would  be  able  to 
get  through  the  eye  of  that  needle.  In  fairness,  it  must  be 
said  for  his  descendants  that,  as  rich  as  they  are,  they  are 
measurably  free  from  the  polished  vices  that  spring  from 
wealth  and  luxury. 

He  believed  in  the  providence  of  God,  and  his  faith  gave 
him  splendid  courage.  A  minister  esteemed  it  his  religious 
duty  to  visit  an  extreme  frontier  settlement  to  preach.  To 
reach  that  settlement  he  had  to  pass  through  a  wilderness 
infested  with  hostile  Indians.  When  about  to  start  on  one 
of  these  journeys,  he  took  his  rifle  from  its  rack  and  was 
about  to  depart  with  it  on  his  shoulder  when  his  good  wife 
said  to  him  :  "  My  dear  husband,  why  do  you  carry  that 
great  heavy  rifle  on  these  long  journeys  ?  Don't  you  know 
that  the  time  and  manner  of  your  taking  off  has  been  decreed 
from  the  beginning  of  time,  and  that  rifle  cannot  vary  the 
decree  one  hair's  breadth?"  "That  is  true,  my  dear  wife, 
and  I  don't  take  my  rifle  to  vary,  but  to  execute  the  decree. 
What  if  I  should  meet  an  Indian  whose  time  had  come  ac- 
cording to  the  decree  and  I  didn't  have  my  rifle?  "  [Laugh- 
ter.] And  the  pious  woman  acknowledged  her  short- 
sightedness. 

He  had  the  merit  to  conceive  and  the  courage  to  exe- 
cute grand  things,  but  he  did  everything  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord,  to  whom  he  gave  the  credit.  He  never  was  troubled 
on  this  score  with  the  doubts  that  beset  the  old  darkey  in 
my  State.  An  old  colored  woman  who  was  teaching  her 
grandchildren  the  Catechism  wound  up  with  the  statement, 
"  Yes,  and  de  Lawd  freed  your  grand-daddy  and  your  grand- 
mammy."  "What  for  you  tellin' them  children  dat  for?" 
said  the  old  man,  who  sat  in  the  corner  smoking  his  pipe. 
"  The  Lawd  never  done  no  such  thing.  'Twas  the  Union 
soldiers  freed  us,  'cause  I  done  seed  'em  do  it  with  my  own 
eyes."  "  Well,"  said  the  old  woman,  "  I  reckon  the  Lawd 
hoped  'cm  do  it."     The  old  man  responded,  "  Well,  maybe 


A  BLEND  OF  CAVALIER  AND  PURITAN     I17 

the  Lawd  hoped  'em  some,  but  he  never  done  it  by  hisself. 
He  done  been  tryin'  to  do  it  by  hisself  for  a  long  time  and 
couldn't."     [Laughter.] 

If  the  sermons  of  their  preachers  are  not  as  effective  as 
formerly  that  is  easily  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  they 
have  fallen  into  the  habit  of  writing  their  sermons.  "  New 
England  ministers,"  said  an  old  Methodist  minister  of  my 
acquaintance,  "  have  lost  all  their  power  since  they  fell  into 
this  habit."  Said  he,  "  The  devil,  knowing  what  a  minister 
who  writes  his  sermon  is  going  to  say,  has  the  whole  week 
in  which  to  thwart  and  counteract  its  good  effect  on  his 
hearers,  but  the  Methodist  minister  steps  into  the  pulpit 
trusting  to  the  inspiration  of  the  moment,  and  the  devil 
himself  don't  know  what  he  is  going  to  say  until  after  he  has 
said  it."     [Laughter.] 

These  carpet-bag  ancestors  of  yours,  having  sent  the  In- 
dians to  their  happy  hunting  grounds  above,  and  having 
possessed  themselves  of  all  their  lands,  and  taken  possession 
of  all  the  cod-fish  in  the  sea,  hastened  to  send  their  sons 
and  daughters  out  to  take  possession  of  the  balance  of  the 
country.  This  process  has  gone  on  until  I  am  told  it  is 
doubtful  whether  there  is  enough  of  the  old  stock  left  in  New 
England  for  seed.  Never  backward  about  coming  forward 
to  accept  a  good  thing,  they  are  to-day  the  governors,  sen- 
ators, members  of  Congress,  preachers  and  teachers  of  the 
land.  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  out  of  tender  regard  for  the 
feelings  of  your  honored  President,  and  not  wishing  to  be 
personal  or  too  pointed  in  my  remarks,  I  have,  as  you  have 
doubtless  observed,  refrained  from  saying,  and  I  will  not 
now  call  attention  to  the  fact,  that  these  same  New  Eng- 
landers  sit  in  the  judgment  seats  of  the  State  and  Nation, 
and  where  the  judgeships  are  not  filled  by  New  Englanders, 
they  are  filled  by  their  first  cousins,  New  Yorkers.  The  only 
dangerous  competitors  in  the  office-holding  line  that  these 
New  Englanders  have  are  the  Irish.  There  is  small  chance 
in  this  country  for  one  not  born  in  New  England  or  Ireland. 
It  is  only  by  chance  or  mischance  that  a  man  born  anywhere 
else  ever  gets  an  office.  The  truth  is  there  is  a  much  better 
mode  of  settling  the  Venezuelan  trouble  than  that  suggested 
by  Mr.  Cleveland.  Send  a  ship-load  of  New  Englanders  to 
that   country,   and   in  a  year  or  two  neither  Venezuela  nor 


Il8  HENRY   C.    CALDWELL 

England  will  have  enough  left  in  that  country  to  fight  over. 
[Laughter.] 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  the  difference  between  your  an- 
cestors and  mine  is  this:  Mine  left  their  native  country  for 
their  country's  good,  and  yours  left  their  native  country 
much  to  its  delight  for  their  own  good.  [Laughter.]  Mine 
left  to  come  to  a  country  where  they  could  "  swear,  chew 
tobacco  and  larrup  niggers,"  and  yours  left  to  come  to  a 
country  where  they  could  pray  as  they  pleased  and  make 
everybody  else  pray  as  they  did. 

To  conclude,  New  England  had  her  Warrens  and  her 
Adamses,  and  Virginia  had  her  Washingtons  and  her  Jef- 
fersons.  Each  had  his  excellencies  and  probably  his  weak- 
nesses, but  now  that  they  are  blended  into  one  harmonious 
whole,  what  a  splendid  mosaic  they  make.  The  Cavalier 
learned  much  that  was  good  from  the  Puritan  and  the  Puritan 
learned  something  from  the  Cavalier,  and  they  have  so 
mingled  together  that  to-day  there  remains  neither  Cavalier 
nor  Puritan,  but  in  their  stead  the  broad-gauge,  brave  and 
patriotic  American.     [Applause.] 


ANDREW    CARNEGIE 


THE   SCOTCH-AMERICAN 

[Speech  of  Andrew  Carnegie  delivered  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  St. 
Andrew's  Society,  New  York,  November  30,   1891.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen:— This  is,  indeed,  the 
age  of  instantaneous  photography.  I  appear  before  you  to- 
night commissioned  to  kodak,  develop  and  finish  the  Scots- 
man at  home,  in  four  minutes  ;  in  four  minutes  more,  to 
picture  him  in  America ;  and  in  two  minutes  more,  to 
celebrate  the  union  of  the  two  varieties,  and  place  before 
you  the  ideal  character  of  the  world,  the  best  flower  in  the 
garden,  the  first-prize  chrysanthemum — the  Scotch-Amer- 
ican. 

Gentlemen,  no  race  pure  in  blood  has  ever  amounted  to 
anything,  either  in  the  human  or  in  the  lower  varieties  of  the 
animal  kingdom.  The  Briton  sings  :  "  Saxon  and  Dane, 
Norman  and  Celt  are  we."  The  American  is  great  chiefly 
because  he  is  a  conglomerate  of  all  the  races  of  Europe. 
For  the  improvement  of  a  race  we  must  have  a  cross. 
Taken  by  himself,  the  Scotsman's  qualities  give  him  a  high 
place  ;  taken  by  himself,  the  American  is  also  in  the  front  ; 
but  it  is  only  through  their  union  that  the  crowning  mercy  has 
been  bestowed  upon  the  world,  and  perfection  at  last  at- 
tained in  the  new  variety  known  as  the  Scotch-American, 
who  in  himself  combines,  in  one  perfect  whole,  the  best 
qualities  and  all  the  virtues  of  both,  and  stands  before  the 
world  shining  for  all,  the  sole  possessor  of  these  united 
talents,  traits,  characteristics  and  virtues,  rare  in  their 
several  excellencies  and  wonderful  in  their  combination. 
[Laughter.] 

The  result  of  lack  of  fusion  between  the  races  is  seen  in 

119 


120  ANDREW   CARNEGIE 

the  royal  families  of  Europe,  most  of  whom  are  diseased, 
many  weak-minded,  not  a  few  imbecile,  and  none  of  them 
good  for  much.  The  nobilities  of  the  Continent  show  the 
operation  of  the  same  law,  and  the  aristocracy  of  Britain 
has  been  preserved  from  equal  degradation  only  by  the  wise 
fusion  which  is  constantly  going  on  between  the  different 
classes  of  our  parent  land.  We  must  have  these  mixtures 
if  we  are  to  live  and  improve.  But  the  greatest  and  best  of 
all  these  that  ever  was  made  is  the  union  between  the  Scot 
and  the  American.  Scotch  wives  for  American  husbands  is 
a  fusion  which  I  am  told  is  hard  to  beat,  and  I  have  a  very 
decided  opinion,  which  many  of  you  have  good  reason,  I 
know,  to  endorse,  that  Scotch  husbands  for  American  wives 
is  an  alliance  which  cannot  be  equalled.  [Laughter  and 
applause.] 

The  original  home  of  the  Scot  is  a  little  land,  the  northern 
part  of  an  island  in  the  North  Sea  stretching  almost  to  a 
line  with  Greenland,  the  land  of  the  mountain  and  the  flood, 
stern  and  tempestuous  in  climate,  broad  and  rugged  in  its 
hills,  but  its  moors  glorious  with  the  purple  heather,  and 
its  dells  exquisite  in  their  loveliness  with  the  fox-glove,  the 
wild-rose  and  the  blue-bell.  This  most  beautiful  of  all  lands 
is  inhabited  by  a  sturdy  race  who  have  been  forced  to  plough 
upon  the  sea  and  reap  upon  the  crag,  their  lives  an  unceas- 
ing struggle.  By  the  bracing  influence  of  poverty,  uncursed 
by  the  evils  of  luxury,  a  race  twin  brother  to  the  Swiss  has 
been  developed,  who  have  held  the  mountain  fastnesses 
against  all  odds,  and  have  maintained  their  free  institutions 
in  the  midst  of  surrounding  despotisms.  Switzerland  and 
Scotland  have  thus  become,  to  all  lovers  of  liberty,  sacred 
ground.  An  attempt  at  this  day  to  touch  either  would  be 
met  by  a  general  protest  throughout  the  civilized  world, 
whose  cry  would  be  "  Hands  off  Switzerland  !  Hands  off 
Scotland  !  for  these  are  the  cradles  of  liberty  and  independ- 
ence." Even  the  determination  of  this  new  world  to  hold 
aloof  from  the  struggles  of  Europe  would  melt  away  in  a 
breath  of  indignation,  if  the  liberty  of  Scotland  or  Switzer- 
land were  assailed.  In  the  largest  sense,  the  land  of  Wallace, 
Knox,  .Scott  and  Burns  belongs  not  to  itself  alone,  but  to 
the  world.      [Applause.] 

What  are  the  elemental  traits  of  the  Scot  ?     Two  are  prom- 


THE   SCOTCH-AMERICAN  121 

inent  :  an  inextinguishable  love  of  liberty,  both  civil  and 
religious,  and  a  passion  for  education.  Before  he  was 
educated,  away  back  before  the  days  of  Bannockburn,  in  the 
days  of  Wallace  and  Bruce,  imbedded  in  the  Scotsman  lay 
the  instinct  of  freedom  and  independence.  He  was  born  to 
be  neither  slave  nor  sycophant ;  he  would  have  liberty  if  he 
had  to  fight  for  it,  and  independence  if  he  had  to  die  for  it. 
Let  it  never  be  forgotten  that  these  sentiments  have  been 
powerfully  moulded  by  his  religion,  for  while  the  Church  in 
other  lands  of  Europe,  when  connected  with  and  supported 
by  the  State,  has  always  been  the  tool  of  power,  and  is  to- 
day the  tool  of  power  in  England,  the  Church  of  Scotland 
has  sprung  from  the  people  and  has  remained  true  to  its 
origin,  the  Church  of  the  people.  In  all  the  crises  of  Scot- 
tish history,  among  the  most  powerful  advocates  of  the 
cause  of  the  people,  have  been  men  in  the  pulpit,  and  this 
from  the  days  of  Knox  and  Melville  to  the  present. 

His  mountains  and  his  glens,  his  moors  and  his  heather, 
his  babbling  burns,  his  religion,  climate, — everything  sur- 
rounding him  has  inculcated  in  the  core  of  the  heart  of  the 
Scotsman  this  intense  and  all-consuming  love  of  liberty  and 
indepentience. 

What,  gentlemen,  is  the  greatest  glory  of  a  State?  The 
universal  education  of  its  people.  In  this  Scotland  stands 
pre-eminent.  John  Knox  is  immortal,  not  because  of  his 
theological  and  ecclesiastical  services,  important  as  they 
were,  but  because  of  his  resolve  that  there  should  be  es- 
tablished a  public  school  in  every  parish  in  Scotland. 
Education  has  done  its  work  with  the  Scotch,  One  might 
be  challenged  to  produce  a  Scotchman  who  cannot  read, 
write  and  cipher,  and  cipher  well,  too,  and  who  knows  just 
where  the  balance  lies  and  to  whom  it  belongs.  For  the 
education  of  their  children  the  poorest  Scotch  family  will 
suffer  privation.  They  may  starve,  but  rear  their  children 
in  ignorance  they  will  not.  Frugal,  shrewd,  prudent,  peace- 
able, conscientious  in  the  discharge  of  duty  to  a  degree, 
and,  above  all  other  races,  gifted  with  the  power  of  concen- 
tration, the  Scottish  race  of  four  millions,  as  is  acknowledged 
by  all,  has  produced  an  effect  upon  the  world  which  no 
other  four  million  of  human  beings,  or  double  that  number, 
can  pretend  to  lay  claim  to,     [Applause.] 


122  ANDREW   CARNEGIE 

Every  Scotchman  is  two  Scotchmen.  As  his  land  has 
the  wild,  barren,  stern  crags  and  mountain  peaks,  around 
which  tempests  blow,  and  also  the  smiling  valleys  below, 
where  the  wild-rose,  the  fox-glove  and  the  blue-bell  blossom, 
so  the  Scotchman,  with  his  rugged  force  and  hard  intellect 
in  his  head  above,  has  a  heart  below  capable  of  being 
touched  to  the  finest  issues.  Sentimental,  enthusiastic,  the 
traces  of  a  hare-brained  race  floating  about  him  from  his 
Celtic  blood,  which  gives  him  fire,  he  is  the  most  poetic 
being  alive.  Poetry  and  song  are  a  part  of  his  very  nature. 
He  is  born  to  such  a  heritage  of  poetry  and  song  and  ro- 
mance, as  the  child  of  no  other  land  enjoys.  Touch  his 
head,  and  he  will  bargain  and  argue  with  you  to  the  last. 
Touch  his  heart,  and  he  falls  upon  your  breast.  Such  is 
the  Scot  as  we  find  him  at  home.  [Applause.]  And,  pos- 
sessed of  such  traits,  when  he  settles  in  this  future  home 
of  our  race — the  English-speaking  race — and  broadens  and 
develops  under  the  bracing  effect  of  our  political  institu- 
tions fovmded  upon  the  royalty  of  man,  and  quickened  by 
a  climate  which  calls  forth  with  increased  force  the  activities 
of  body  and  mind,  what  part  has  he  played  from  the  Amer- 
ican  side  of  his  history?  Sir,  we  have  heard  a  great  deal 
to-night,  and  trust  to  hear  more,  of  the  land  we  live  in. 
The  Americans  have  what  every  man  worthy  of  the  name 
of  man  must  have — a  country  to  live  for ;  if  need  be, 
a   country    to    die    for.     [Applause.] 

Who  made  the  American  nation?  A  little  more  than  a 
century  ago,  what  was  the  American  ?  A  puny,  miserable 
colonist,  a  dependent  of  another  nation.  He  was  nothing 
higher,  nothing  better,  than  a  Canadian, — a  man  without  a 
country  and,  therefore,  but  little  of  a  man.  Who  gave  the 
American  a  country  ?  Bancroft  tells  :  "  The  first  voice  for 
dissolving  all  connection  with  Great  Britain  came  not  from 
the  Puritans  of  New  England,  the  Dutch  of  New  York,  or 
the  planters  of  Virginia,  but  from  the  Scotch  Presbyterians 
of  North  Carolina."  [Applause.]  The  great  claims  of  the 
Puritans,  of  the  Virginia  planters,  are  gladly  admitted  ;  and 
to  the  Dutch  of  New  York  every  one  is  willing  to  express 
our  gratitude  for  the  part  they  played.  But  these  races 
only  followed  the  first  voice  crying  aloud  to  the  poor  de- 
graded colonists  to  rise  and  be  men.     That  voice  was  the 


THE   SCOTCH-AMERICAN  123 

echo  from  the  heather  hills,  and  rightly  so,  for  ours  is  the 
race  whose  main  work  for  centuries  was  the  maintenance  of 
the  existence  of  our  own  country  at  home  against  England. 
The  same  great  task  devolved  upon  the  Scot  here.  It  is  the 
mission  of  the  true  Scot  ever  to  lead  the  people  wherever 
he  goes,  in  the  cause  of  liberty  and  independence,  and,  in 
any  struggle  for  liberty,  our  place  is  ever  in  the  van.  And 
when  this  Scotch  idea  had  electrified  the  land  and  the 
second  declaration  was  signed,  no  fewer  than  six  of  these 
great  Scotch-American  leaders  attached  their  names  and 
pledged  their  lives,  their  fortunes,  and  their  sacred  honor. 
The  part  that  our  race  played  in  the  Revolutionary  struggle, 
taken  in  comparison  with  our  numbers,  both  in  council  and 
in  the  field,  is  one  worthy  of  a  race  of  heroes.  Wherever 
the  Scot  goes,  he  cannot  live  without  a  country.  The 
development  of  the  Australian  Commonwealth  to-day  is  an- 
other proof  of  his  ineradicable  yearning  for  a  country  of  his 
own.  If  there  be  no  country,  he  calls  upon  his  less  alert, 
less  independent  fellow-citizens,  to  follow  him  and  create 
one.  He  found  this  a  colony,  and  he  summoned  it  to  arise 
and  become  a  Nation. 

There  was  another  service  which  he  rendered  to  this 
countr}^,  second  only,  if  it  be  second,  to  giving  to  it  the  orig- 
inal idea  of  independence.  The  most  remarkable  political 
work  known  to  man  is,  admittedly,  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States.  It  is  the  universal  charter  of  political 
government.  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  has  proclaimed  it  the 
greatest  political  work  that  was  ever  struck  off,  at  one  time, 
by  the  brain  and  purpose  of  man.  Lord  Salisbury  and 
many  Conservative  leaders  are  now  extolling  its  rare  deeds. 
Who  gave  that  inestimable  charter  to  this  country?  That 
constitution  is  substantially  the  work  of  our  race,  the 
Scotch-American — Alexander  Hamilton.  No  other  single 
influence,  nor,  perhaps,  all  other  influences  combined,  in  the 
making  of  this  great  instrument,  were  so  potent  as  the  con- 
tribution of  that  one  Scotch-American.     [Applause.] 

Our  race  is  entitled  to  share  the  rich  heritage  of  the 
great  republic.  We  stand  here  as  of  right,  by  virtue  of 
the  share — a  large  share — we  took  in  the  making  of  Amer- 
ica. We  are  joint  proprietors  here.  Just  as  we  find  diffi- 
culty in  crediting  one  human  brain  with  all  that  we  find  in 


124  ANDREW   CARNEGIE 

Shakespeare,  it  is  difficult  to  credit  the  makers  of  the 
American  Constitution  with  a  full  knowledge  of  the  merits 
of  their  work.  They  builded  wiser,  much  wiser,  than  they 
knew.  Designed  for  three  millions  of  people,  occupying  the 
fringe  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  it  has  been  found  capable 
of  governing  the  majority  of  the  English-speaking  race. 
Radical  in  the  extreme,  founded  upon  the  equality  of  the 
citizen,  and  yet  most  conservative  in  its  provisions  and 
actions,  it  has  just  been  copied,  in  the  main,  by  the  Aus- 
tralian Constitutional  Convention.  [Applause.]  Wher- 
ever an  English-speaking  community  exists,  it  adopts  the 
principles  of  that  Constitution  :  even  the  mother-land  itself, 
year  by  year,  irrespective  of  the  party  that  may  be  in 
power,  whether  you  call  it  Liberal  or  Conservative,  is  en- 
gaged in  bringing  its  institutions  into  harmony  with  that 
great  work  of  political  perfection  ;  and  no  Parliament  has 
done  more  in  that  direction  than  that  which  now  sits.  It 
is  founded  upon  justice  and  equality,  and  its  principles  are 
rapidly  permeating  the  English-speaking  race  throughout 
the  world.     [Applause.] 

We  all  hear  much  in  these  days  of  Imperial  Federation, 
which  is  an  attempt  to  band  together  the  minority,  leaving 
out  the  majority,  of  the  English-speaking  race.  This  phase 
is  rapidly  passing  away,  and  giving  place  to  what  I  may 
venture  to  claim  is  a  nobler  conception, — the  confederation 
of  the  entire  race.  Each  of  the  three  great  branches, — the 
British,  the  Australian,  and  the  American,  including  our 
Scotland,  Canada,  merged  in  the  union,  to  be  perfectly  in- 
dependent,— these  three  branches,  cemented  by  an  alliance 
which  year  after  year,  generation  after  generation,  must 
assume  closer  and  closer  forms,  as,  by  increased  speed  of 
communication,  the  parts  come  nearer  and  nearer  to  each 
other.  This  idea  is  beginning  to  take  root.  I  have  already 
been  told  that  three  distinguished  Englishmen  have  recently 
declared  that,  if  it  Avere  necessary  to  its  realization  that 
even  Scotland,  England,  Ireland  and  Wales  were  to  become 
states  of  the  American  union,  they  were  prepared  for  this, 
because  the  fruits  certain  to  flow  from  such  a  federation 
were  such  as  to  justify  any  change  of  form. 

A  great  orator  is  to  follow  me  and  speak  of  the  destiny 
of  our  adopted  country.     This  idea  postulates  as  that  des- 


TFIE    SCOTCH-AMERICAN  1 25 

tiny  that  our  adopted  country  adopt  all  other  En;j^hsli- 
speaking  communities  under  the  ample  folds  of  the  Ameri- 
can Constitution,  of  which  Webster  said  that,  although  it 
had  extended  further  and  further  and  the  poimiation  had 
doubled  over  and  over  again,  they  had  not  outrun  its  bene- 
fits or  its  protection.  Neither  would  the  scattered  portions 
of  the  English-speaking  race,  if  all  embraced  within  its  folds, 
exhaust  its  benefits  or  its  protection.  Such  a  confederation 
would  hold  in  its  hand  the  destinies  and  the  peace  of  the 
world.  It  would  banish  humanity's  deepest  disgrace,  the 
murder  of  men  under  the  name  of  war,  saying  to  any  dis- 
turbers of  the  peace — 

"  Hold,  I  command  you  both  ! 
The  one  that  stirs  the  first  makes  me  his  foe. 
Unfold  to  me  the  causes  of  your  quarrel  -; 

And  I  will  judge  betwixt  you." 

[Applause.] 

Gentlemen,  not  a  sword  would  be  drawn,  not  a  shot  fired, 
if  the  English-speaking  people  unitedly  say  nay.  I  shall  be 
told  this  is  a  wild  dream  ;  that  the  man  who  always  dreams 
accomplishes  nothing.  If  that  be  true,  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  the  man  who  never  dreams,  never  accomplishes 
anything  either.  If  it  be  a  dream,  it  is  a  noble  dream,  and 
illumines  the  path  to  the  coming  brotherhood  of  man — the 
Parliament  of  man.  The  English-speaking  race  has  already 
banished  war  from  its  members.  Since  a  Scotch  Prime 
Minister  settled  the  Alabama  controversy  by  arbitration, 
there  has  been  no  thought  of  war  ;  from  that  day  till  now, 
up  to  the  Behring  Sea  arbitration,  it  is  manifest  that  Eng- 
lish-speaking men  are  never  hereafter  to  be  called  upon  to 
murder  each  other  in  war.  Thus  far  we  have  already  trav- 
elled, and  I  submit  to  you  to-night  that,  as  it  was  our 
Scotch-American  race  that  first  proclaimed  the  independence 
of  this  country  and  forced  separation,  the  duty  falls  upon  us 
to  proclaim  the  new  doctrine  of  reconciliation,  confedera- 
tion and  reunion.  It  is  an  idea  worthy  of  a  sentimental, 
romantic,  idea-creating  race,  gifted  with  that  rarest  of  all 
gifts,  imagination,  which  raises  man  to  God-like  action,  or 
at  least  to  God-like  dreams.     [Applause.] 

If  the  drawing  together  of  all  portions  of  the   English- 


126  ANDREW   CARNEGIE 

speaking  race  be  a  dream,  wake  me  not,  let  me  dream.  It 
is  a  dream  better  than  most  realities.  Give  me  as  my  con- 
stant hope  that — through  which  I  see  in  the  future,  the  draw- 
ing together  closer  and  closer  of  the  English-speaking  race 
under  a  Federal  constitution,  which  has  shown  that  the 
freest  government  of  the  parts  produces  the  strongest  gov- 
ernment of  the  whole — there  may  come  a  common  citizen- 
ship embracing  all  lands,  the  only  test  being : 

"  If  Shakespeare's  tongue  be  spoken  there, 
And  songs  of  Burns  are  in  the  air. ' ' 

[Applause,  loud  and  long-continued.] 


LEWIS  E.   CARR 


THE  LAWYER  AND  THE  HOD  CARRIER 

[Speech  of  Lewis  E.  Carr  at  the  annual  banquet  of  the  New  York  State 
Bar  Association,  Albany,  N.  Y.,  January  17,  1900.  Walter  S.  Logan, 
President  of  the  Association,  occupied  the  chair.  The  speech  of  Mr. 
Carr  followed  that  of  John  Cunneen,  and  President  Logan  introduced 
Mr.  Carr  in  the  following  words  :  "  The  Committee  of  Arrangements  de- 
cided some  time  ago  that  it  never  would  do  to  let  John  Cunneen  speak  for 
the  Bar  of  Buffalo  without  having  something  to  follow  him  which  would 
bring  the  audience  down  to  earth.  [Applause.]  They  have  selected  that 
modest  and  retiring  gentleman,  that  best  and  greatest  of  lawyers,  Mr. 
Lewis  E.  Carr,  of  Albany."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  State  Bar 
Association  of  the  State  of  New  York: — These  occa- 
sions,when  the  lions  of  the  profession  emerge  from  their  urban 
and  rural  lairs  for  their  annual  meet  and  the  time  comes  for 
them  to  gather  about  the  festive  board  to  enjoy  the  feast  of  rea- 
son and  the  flow  of  Bear  spring  water  and  the  other  innocuous 
beverages,  are  exceedingly  enjoyable,  yet  they  have  their 
mournful  aspect.  A  year  ago  it  was  my  fortune  to  take 
part  in  the  proceedings  of  that  annual  meeting  for  the  educa- 
tion and  amusement  of  those  who  were  then  assembled.  I 
was  then  associated  with  distinguished  individuals,  star- 
actors,  as  it  were,  but,  as  I  look  around  to-night  and  see  who 
have  been  called  upon  to  take  part  at  this  time,  I  find  I  am 
the  only  one  who  ofificiated  then.  Whether  it  be  another 
instance  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  [laughter],  or  for  what- 
ever reason,  you  can  well  understand  why  it  is  that  I  am 
about  to  speak  to  you  in  a  melancholy  way  upon  this  occa- 
sion. Of  course,  you  will  not  take  what  I  say  literally.  We 
had  on  that  occasion,  as  we  have  had  now,  the  Chief  Judge  of 
the  Court  of  Appeals,   who  graced  and  adorned  that  feast, 

127 


128  LEWIS    E.    CARR 

as  he  graces  and  adorns  every  place  where  he  may  be,  and 
every  position  he  may  occupy.  We  had  the  Governor 
then  ;  Ave  have  had  the  Governor  now  ;  not  the  same  person, 
but  one  that,  ex  officio,  is  just  as  big  when  the  other  isn't 
around.  Now  things  are  a  little  different  than  they  were 
last  year,  because  then  they  said  I  might  roam  all  over  the  lot 
and  take  a  nip  wherever  the  herbage  promised  the  sweetest 
bite,  but,  when  I  was  told  that  I  was  to  say  something  here 
this  time,  an  old  stager  at  this  sort  of  business— he  must 
have  been  an  old  stager,  because  he  called  me  a  young  man 
— took  me  one  side  and  said  :  "  Now,  you  ought  to  have  a 
subject ;  not  that  you  are  expected  to  say  much  about  that 
subject;  the  less,  perhaps,  the  better ;  but,"  said  he,  "  it  is 
just  like  one  of  those  big  boat  races,  where  there  are  a  num- 
ber of  crews  that  are  anxious  to  exploit  themselves  ;  they 
stake  the  course  off  with  little  flags,  and  each  crew  has  a  lane 
in  which  they  are  expected  to  keep."  I  said  :  "  That  is  all 
right ;  I  can  well  understand  how  the  crew  that  is  ahead  in 
their  abounding  vigor  may  prance  all  over  the  course,  but  I 
never  could  see  any  temptation  for  the  fellows  that  were 
behind  to  wobble  over  the  line  and  take  some  other  fellow's 
water."  I  think  that  fits  my  case  [laughter],  because  it  is 
ordinarily  xsxy  luck  to  be  either  near  or  at  the  tail  end  of  the 
procession  [laughter],  or  in  the  front  rank  of  the  urchins 
that  tag  on  behind.  But  this  old  stager  said — I  Avon't  tell 
who  it  was — "  I  will  give  you  a  subject  that  will  be  a  poser," 
and,  what  do  you  suppose  he  brought  in,  written  in  a  round, 
bold  hand  on  the  typewriter  [laughter],  "  The  Lawyer  and  the 
Hod  Carrier,"  an  essay  supposed  to  be  wise,  and  possibly, 
otherwise,  with  regard  to  the  similarities  and  the  dissimilari- 
ties of  the  profession  of  the  one  and  the  avocation  of  the 
other,  bound  in  law  sheep  on  the  edges. 

The  idea  didn't  originate  with  him.  It  originated  with  a 
wise  and  eminent  judge  of  one  of  our  courts,  I  won't  say 
who  it  was,  because  if  you  keep  abreast  of  the  current  judi- 
cial opinions  you  will  have  already  guessed  who  it  was,  and, 
if  you  haven't  done  that,  let  me  admonish  you  to  do  it,  or 
you  will  find  some  fellow  who  has  got  a  full-fledged  demon 
of  pernicious  activity  in  him  will  confront  you  to  your  undo- 
ing with  the  latest  edition  from  the  judicial  seat  of  war. 
[Laughter.] 


THE    LAWYER   AND   THE    HOD    CARRIER  129 

After  all,  there  are  many  similarities,  if  you  will  remember, 
or  if  you  will  look  at  it,  between  the  hod  carrier  and  the  lawyer. 
Both  are  useful  members  of  society.  The  hod  carrier,  with 
patient  and  laborious  toil,  carries  up  to  the  skilled  craftsman 
above  the  material  with  which  to  build  the  lasting  and  per- 
fect wall.  If  he  loiters  on  the  way,  or  if  he  carries  up  un- 
fitted or  unsuited  material,  then  the  results  will  not  be  such 
as  redound  to  the  credit  of  the  craftsman  that  is  on  high. 
We,  too,  from  the  great  heap  of  material,  gather  that  which 
we  think  is  fitted  for  the  case,  and,  wath  patient  toil,  carry 
it  up  these  slippery  hills  to  the  stony  mansion  above,  and 
there  the  judicial  craftsman  is  expected  to  put  in  true  and 
perfect  form  the  materials  that  we  take  up,  and  we  sometimes 
criticise  the  result ;  possibly  it  may  be  our  fault,  because  the 
material  we  take  may  not  be  exactly  fitted  and  suited  for  the 
work.  You  will  remember,  I  think  some  of  you  will,  at  all 
events,  the  scriptural  story  about  the  complaints  that  were 
made  by  the  race  that  was  in  bondage,  that  they  were  re- 
quired to  make  bricks  without  straw.  That  was  hard  enough  ; 
but  we  oftentimes  ask  our  judicial  craftsmen  to  make  the 
true  and  enduring  wall  of  legal  precedent  from  straw  alone, 
ancient,  mouldy  and  well  threshed.  [Laughter.]  Of  course, 
it  isn't  our  fault  at  all  times,  because  there  is  such  an  abun- 
dance of  material  from  which  we  must  select.  I  took  occa- 
sion last  year  to  speak  about  the  horde  of  Huns  that  was 
consuming  our  substance,  and  adding  to  the  white  man's 
burden,  but  now  the  Scherer  is  at  hand  [laughter],  making 
diligent  and  persistent  search  for  the  golden  fleece.  All  that 
we  can  do  is  to  pray,  if  we  are  not  of  the  class  to  which  the 
efficacy  of  prayer  is  denied,  that  the  Lord  should  temper  the 
wind  to  the  shorn  lambs  of  the  profession.     [Laughter.] 

But  now  some  other  things  are  to  be  noted,  because  it 
oftentimes  occurs  that  the  poor,  patient  hod  carrier,  as  he  is 
on  his  skyward  way,  is  met  by  a  brick  or  mortar  from  the 
scaffolding  falling  carelessly,  and  down  he  goes.  We  ex- 
perience just  exactly  such  misfortunes.  There  are  three 
ways,  as  1  take  it  you  will  have  already  observed,  in  which 
you  meet  misfortune  and  your  clients  come  to  grief  in  the 
zigzag  way  from  the  exultant  beginning  of  a  litigation  to  its 
mournful  close.  The  first  is  when  the  court  lands  a  right 
hook  on  the  point  of  the  jaw  and  you  go  to  kingdom  come, 


130  LEWIS    E.    CARR 

no  questions  asked  or  answered.  [Laughter.]  That  is 
quick  and  merciful,  too,  because  it  saves  you  that  agony  of 
suspense  when  you  are  alternating  between  hope  and  fear. 
The  second  way  is  when  they  fence  a  little  with  you,  when 
they  ward  off  your  blow,  and  when  they  will  make  you  be- 
lieve that  in  the  end  they  are  going  to  throw  up  the  sponge 
and  let  you  carry  off  the  belt;  but,  look  out ;  the  first  thing 
you  know  a  solar  plexus  knocks  you  over.  [Laughter.] 
Now,  in  that  case  we  feel  better,  because  we  all  take  a  little 
pride  in  the  idea  that  we  can  stand  up  against  a  judicial 
Sharkey  or  Jeffries  and  not  be  knocked  out  in  the  first  round. 
The  third  way  is  when  they  tell  you  the  points  you  make 
are  good ;  you  have  argued  them  in  an  exceedingly  strong 
and  forcible  fashion,  and,  very  likely,  if  that  had  been  the 
idea  at  the  origin  of  the  suit,  it  might  have  been  successful. 
But  it  is  too  late  when  you  get  up  where  they  are,  and  your 
client  must  get  whipped  by  what  they  call  the  justice  of  the 
law.  That  is  the  aggravating  way,  because  they  tell  you 
how  near  you  came  to  catching  your  hare,  but  you  can't  have 
the  pleasure  of  cooking  it,  because  some  less  experienced 
huntsman  at  an  earlier  period  of  the  chase  started  the  dog 
on  the  wrong  trail.     [Laughter.] 

Li  the  course  of  these  remarks  you  will  notice  that  I  have 
made  use  of  some  expressions,  from  which  you  might  think 
that  I  have  been  devoting  my  time  to  reading  accounts  of 
these  gentle  encounters  that  take  place  under  the  Horton 
law,  but  it  isn't  true ;  you  are  not  always  to  take  words 
exactly  in  the  way  they  are  used,  nor  are  you  to  judge  of 
the  meaning  exactly  from  what  people  say,  and  you  will 
pardon  me  if  I  digress  a  little  from  this  subject  that  was 
given  me  by  the  old  stager  I  have  already  mentioned ;  per- 
haps it  isn't  exactly  germane  to  that  subject,  but  yet  it  is 
just  about  as  germane  as  a  good  deal  of  the  stock  we  carry 
up  on  the  hill  for  the  judicial  fanning-mill  that  operates  in 
the  cloistered  precincts  of  the  Capitol.      [Laughter.] 

Members  of  our  profession  have  somehow  confused  the 
use  of  terms,  and  you  will  pardon  me  for  speaking  about  it 
here;  that  is,  in  referring  to  a  portion  of  the  apparel  of  the 
judges  of  our  highest  court,  and  calling  it  a  gown.  Now, 
bear  in  mind,  I  am  in  favor  of  the  distinguishing  mark,  by 
which  the  judge  is  taken  out  from  the  class  of  the  individual, 


THE    LAWYER   AND   THE    HOD    CARRIER  131 

but  you  will  sec  from  what  I  am  about  to  sa}-,  how  inappro- 
priate is  that  term.  The  term  gown  sometimes  suggests 
that  exceedingly  early  period  in  our  lives,  when  sex  isn't 
exactly  determinable  by  the  character  of  the  dress.  That  is 
what  a  candidate  for  office  learned  one  day  when  lie  was  out 
seeking  to  have  some  supporting  influence  among  his  con- 
stituents, and  finding  a  youngster  in  the  room,  and,  feeling 
sure  that  he  might  reach  the  mother's  heart,  says :  "  My 
little  miss,  how  are  you  to-day  ?  "  And  the  youngster  said  : 
"  I  dess  you  made  a  mistake  ;  I  ain't  a  girl ;  I's  a  boy." 
Then  the  matter  of  the  gown  suggests  another  thing.  The 
story  is  told  of  some  lawyer  a  good  ways  off,  not  here,  who 
had  been  ingloriously  defeated  in  some  litigation,  and  in  the 
acrid  moments  of  defeat  said  :  "  The  court  that  pronounced 
a  judgment  of  that  kind  must  be  a  lot  of  old  women."  So 
you  see  the  term  "  gown  "  is  inappropriate.     [Laughter.] 

But  the  term  "  gown"  is  appropriate  to  some  ;  is  appropri- 
ate to  the  mother,  whose  watchful  care  over  the  beginning  of 
our  lives,  and  whose  kindly  nurture  first  started  us  on  the  jour- 
ney of  life.  The  mother,  whose  words  of  consolation  have 
assuaged  our  many  griefs,  and  whose  admonitions  have  saved 
us  from  many  a  wrong  ;  whose  tear-stained  cheek  was  more 
eloquent  than  words  that  might  be  uttered  ;  the  mother,  who, 
living,  we  regard  with  the  most  reverent  respect,  and  of 
whom,  dead,  our  treasured  memories  are  the  choicest  posses- 
sion of  our  lives.  It  reminds  us,  too,  of  that  other  one  of  the 
female  creation,  the  wife,  who,  in  the  early  beginning  of  our 
lives,  linked  her  fate  and  fortune  with  ours,  and  confidingly 
put  her  hand  in  ours,  prepared  to  go  on  through  the  storm  and 
through  the  sunshine  ;  who  has  been  by  our  side  in  all  of 
our  trials,  in  all  of  our  sufferings  and  in  the  hour  of  triumph; 
whose  patient  endurance  has  been  to  us  of  the  utmost  value  ; 
whose  words  of  consolation  have  poured  balm  into  the  sore 
and  bleeding  heart,  and  whose  words  of  commendation  have 
brought  added  pleasure  to  the  exquisite  joy  of  our  triumph. 
[Applause.]  The  wife  who  now,  when  the  bloom  of  youth 
is  gone,  and  frosty  fingers  have  turned  the  raven  tresses  of 
that  early  time  into  a  snowy  crown,  still  stands,  by  our  side, 
and,  steadily  looking  forward,  goes  with  us  down  into  the 
narrowing  vale,  where  the  branches,  bending  lower  and  still 
lower  above  our  heads,  shut  out  the  view  and  keep  us  from 


132  LEWIS   E.    CARR 

observation  of  the  realm  beyond.  [Applause.]  For  her  no 
gown  is  too  rich  or  costly  that  human  fingers  can  fashion,  no 
gems  of  loving  thought  too  priceless  for  which  our  human 
tongues  can  frame  a  setting. 

Call  it  a  robe  and  that  brings  to  us  a  sense  of  the  dignity 
of  the  ofifice  they  hold  !  A  kingly  robe  brings  to  us  a  con- 
sciousness, not  of  the  atom  of  mortality  who  occupies  the 
place,  but  of  the  magnificent  authority  that  guides,  directs 
and  controls  the  fate  and  fortunes  of  a  people.  The  priestly 
robe,  Avhile  it  may  speak  to  us  of  the  kindly  men  who  minis- 
ter to  broken  hearts  and  wounded  feelings,  still  tells  us  of 
that  world-wide  dominion,  and  of  that  universal  sway  by 
which  men's  thoughts  and  feelings  are  turned  to  the  upper 
air  for  the  comfort,  consolation  and  relief  they  would  have. 
So  does  the  judicial  robe  tell  us  of  the  mighty  power  and 
the  tenderness,  after  all,  of  the  judicial  ofifice,  so  kindly  in 
its  nature  that  it  shelters  the  frailest  right  of  the  humble,  so 
strong  and  invulnerable  that  it  checks  and  stays  the  assault 
of  the  mightiest  baron  in  the  land. 

But  it  is  time  forme  to  disappear.  I  have  felt,  along  with 
others  of  my  age,  the  pressure  from  the  younger  generation, 
and  the  indication  it  was  time  to  make  room  for  their  abun- 
dant vigor,  and  so  the  change  is  coming  now,  as  it  has  been 
before,  and  as  it  will  be  in  the  future,  so  that  change  seems  to 
be  the  order  of  the  day  and  of  our  lives  ;  change  in  thought 
and  feeling,  change  in  mind  and  manner,  change  in  practice 
and  procedure,  but,  after  all,  it  will  come  to  this  younger 
generation,  as  it  has  come  to  us,  that  the  great  principles  of 
law,  the  eternal  truths  on  which  we  rest  for  the  protection 
of  human  rights  and  the  redress  of  human  wrongs,  are  as 
unchangeable  and  enduring  as  the  eternal  twinkling  of  the 
stars.     [Applause,] 


HAMPTON  L.   CARSON 


OUR  NAVY 


[vSpeech  of  Hampton  I,.  Carson,  delivered  at  the  dinner  in  honor  of 
Captain  Charles  E.  Clark,  U.  S.  N.,  late  Commander  of  the  battleship 
"Oregon,"  at  the  Union  League,  Philadelphia,  April  5,  1899.  Joseph 
G.  Darlington,  President  of  the  Union  League,  in  introducing  Mr.  Carson 
remarked:  "The  next  toast  is  'Our  Navy.'  Well,  he  would  be  a 
rather  poor  apology  for  an  American  who  could  not  respond  to  that. 
When  we  consider  that  the  gentleman  upon  whom  I  now  call  is  not  only 
a  very  good  American,  but  a  very  eloquent  speaker,  you  will  have  some 
idea  of  the  pleasure  in  store  for  you.  I  have  great  pleasure  in  in- 
troducing Mr.  Hampton  L,.  Carson."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Union 
League  : — It  was  my  good  fortune,  some  eighteen  months 
ago,  to  be  in  the  city  of  Seattle,  when  the  "  Monterey  "  was 
lying  in  the  harbor  under  the  command  of  Captain  Clark.  At 
the  time  of  my  visit  clear  skies,  placid  waters  and  silent  guns 
gave  little  indication  of  the  awful  responsibility  that  was 
soon  to  be  imposed  upon  the  gallant  commander.  My  boys, 
having  met  him,  were,  like  myself,  intensely  interested  in 
the  outcome  of  his  voyage  ;  and  I  can  say  to  him  that  the 
pulsations  of  the  engines  which  drove  the  ''  Oregon  "  through 
fourteen  thousand  miles  of  tropic  seas  were  accompanied  by 
the  sympathetic  beatings  of  hearts  which  had  learned  to  love 
and  respect  this  great  captain  as  he  richly  deserved. 

The  American  Navy  !  The  most  concise  tribute  that  I 
ever  heard  paid  to  the  sailors  of  the  United  States  was 
contained  in  the  answer  of  a  man  from  Indiana,  who  was  an 
applicant  for  office  under  General  Grant,  just  after  the  Civil 
Service  rules  had  gone  into  operation.  The  applicant  was 
apprehensive  as  to  his  ability  to  respond  to  the  questions, 
but  one  of  his  answers  captured  the  Board  of  Examiners  as 

^33 


134  HAMPTON    L.    CARSON 

well  as  the  President,  and  he  secured  the  place.  The  ques- 
tion was,  "  How  many  sailors  did  Great  Britain  send  here, 
during  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  for  the  purpose  of  sub- 
duing us  ?  "  and  the  answer  was,  "  More  by  a  d sight  than 

ever  got  back."     [Great  laughter.] 

When  Louis  XIV,  in  order  to  check  what  he  perceived 
to  be  the  growing  supremacy  of  England  upon  the  seas, 
determined  to  establish  a  navy,  he  sent  for  his  great  minister 
Colbert,  and  said  to  him,  "  I  wish  a  navy — how  can  I  create 
it?  "  Colbert  replied,  "  Make  as  many  galley  slaves  as  you 
can."  Thereupon  every  Huguenot  who  refused  to  doff  his 
bonnet  on  the  street  as  the  king  passed  by,  every  boy  of 
seventeen  who  could  give  no  account  of  himself,  every 
vagrant  without  an  occupation,  was  seized,  convicted  and 
sent  to  the  galleys.  Could  a  navy  of  heroes  be  made  of 
galley  slaves?  The  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  says 
"No." 

On  the  twenty-second  day  of  December,  1775,  the  navy  of 
the  United  States  was  born  on  the  waters  of  our  Delaware. 
On  that  day  Esek  Hopkins,  of  Rhode  Island,  was  placed  in 
command  of  a  little  fleet  of  eight  vessels — two  of  them  ships, 
two  of  them  brigs,  the  others  very  much  smaller.  The 
English  officers  sneered  in  derision  at  "  the  fleet  of  whale- 
boats."  The  rattlesnake  flag — a  yellow  flag  with  a  pine 
tree  in  the  centre  and  a  rattlesnake  coiled  beneath  its 
branches,  with  the  words  **  Don't  tread  on  me  " — was  run  to 
the  masthead  of  the  "  Providence  ",  being  hauled  there  by 
the  hands  of  the  first  lieutenant,  John  Paul  Jones.  That 
little  fleet  of  eight  vessels,  mounting  only  114  guns,  was 
sent  forth  to  confront  a  naval  power  of  1 12  battleships  with 
3,714  guns — not  a  single  gun  of  ours  throwing  a  ball  heavier 
than  nine  pounds,  while  five  hundred  of  the  English  guns 
threw  a  weight  of  metal  of  double  that  amount.  Wasn't  it 
an  audacious  thing  ?  Why,  it  seems  to  me  one  of  the 
marvels  of  human  history  when  I  reflect  upon  what  was  at- 
tempted by  the  Americans  of  1776. 

Look  at  the  situation.  Thirteen  different  colonics  strung 
along  a  narrow  strip  of  coast ;  three  thousand  miles  of  rolling 
ocean  on  the  one  side  and  three  thousand  miles  of  impene- 
trable wilderness  on  the  other  ;  colonies  with  infinite  diver- 
sity of  interests — diverse  in  blood,  diverse  in  conditions  of 


OUR   NAVY  135 

society,  diverse  in  ambition,  diverse  in  pursuits — the  English 
Puritan  on  the  rock  of  Plymouth,  the  Knickerbocker  Dutch 
on  the  shores  of  the  Hudson,  the  Jersey  Quaker  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Delaware,  the  Swede  extending  from  here  to 
Wilmington,  Maryland  bisected  by  our  great  bay  of  the 
Chesapeake,  Virginia  cut  in  half  by  the  same  water-way. 
North  Carolina  and  South  Carolina  lying  south  of  impene- 
trable swamps  as  inaccessible  to  communication  as  a  range 
of  mountains,  and  farther  south  the  sparsely-settled  colony 
of  Georgia.  Huguenot,  Cavalier,  Catholic,  Quaker,  Dutch- 
man, Puritan,  Mennonite,  Moravian  and  Church  of  England 
men ;  and  yet,  under  the  hammer  stroke  of  British  oppres- 
sion, thirteen  colonies  were  welded  into  one  thunderbolt, 
which  was  launched  at  the  throne  of  George  HI. 

That  little  navy  under  Hopkins — where  wxre  those  sailors 
bred?  Read  Burke's  speech  on  the  conciliation  of  America. 
They  sprang  from  the  loins  of  hardy  fishermen  amidst 
tumbling  fields  of  ice  on  the  banks  of  Newfoundland,  from 
those  who  had  speared  whales  in  the  tepid  waters  of  Brazil, 
or  who  had  pursued  their  gigantic  game  into  the  Arctic  zone 
or  beneath  the  light  of  the  Southern  Cross.  That  fleet  of 
eight  ships  sailed  from  the  Delaware  on  the  twenty-second  of 
December,  1775,  and  proceeded  to  the  island  of  New  Provi- 
dence, among  the  Bahamas.  Our  colonies  and  our  armies 
were  without  arms,  without  powder,  without  munitions  of 
war.  The  very  first  exploit  of  the  fleet  was  the  capture,  on 
the  nineteenth  of  March,  1776,  of  150  cannon,  130  barrels  of 
powder  and  eight  warships,  which  were  carried  in  triumph 
into  Long  Island  Sound.  But  what  of  Am.erican  heroism 
when  the  soldiers  of  Howe,  of  Clinton,  of  Carleton  and  of 
Gage  came  here  to  fight  the  farmers  of  Pennsylvania,  of  Con- 
necticut and  Virginia,  and  the  gay  cavaliers  who  loved  adven- 
ture ?  The  British  soldiers  had  conquered  India  under  Sir 
Robert  Clive  and  Sir  Eyre  Coote  ;  they  had  been  the  heroes 
of  Plassey  and  Pondicherry  ;  men  who  had  subjected  to 
British  dominion  a  country  almost  as  extensive  as  our  own 
fair  republic  and  containing  one  hundred  and  ninety  millions 
of  souls.  Here  they  found  themselves  faced  by  men  of 
their  own  blood,  men  in  whose  breasts  burned  the  spirit  and 
the  love  of  that  liberty  which  was  to  encircle  the  heavens. 
On  the  glory-crowned  heights  of   Bunker  Hill  the  patriots 


136  HAMPTON    L.    CARSON 

gazed  at  the  rafters  of  their  own  burning  dwellings  in  the 
town  of  Charlestown,  and  heard  the  cannon  shots  hurled 
from  British  ships  against  the  base  of  the  great  hill.  Three 
times  did  scarlet  regiments  ascend  that  hill  only  to  be  driven 
back  ;  the  voice  of  that  idiot  boy,  Job  Pray,  ringing  out 
above  the  din  of  battle,  "  Let  them  come  on  to  Breed's — 
the  people  will  teach  them  the  law." 

When  the  evacuation  by  the  British  of  the  metropolis  of 
New  England  was  effected  by  the  troops  under  the  com- 
mand of  a  Virginia  soldier.  General  Washington,  then  for 
the  first  time  did  sectionalism  and  partisanship  and  divisions 
on  narrow  lines  vanish  ;  the  patriots  who  had  fought  at 
Bunker  Hill  were  now  no  longer  to  be  known  as  the  troops 
of  Massachusetts,  of  Connecticut  or  of  Rhode  Island,  but 
henceforth  it  was  the  Continental  Army.  On  the  very  day 
when  the  British  were  driven  out  of  Boston,  John  Paul 
Jones,  with  that  historic  rattlesnake  flag,  and,  floating  above 
it,  not  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  but  the  Stripes  with  the  Union 
Jack,  entered  the  waters  of  Great  Britain ;  and  then  it  was 
seen  that  an  American  captain  with  an  American  ship  and 
American  sailors  had  the  pluck  to  push  out  into  foreign  seas 
and  to  beard  the  British  lion  in  his  den.  The  same  channel 
which  had  witnessed  the  victories  of  Dc  Ruyter  and  Von 
Tromp,  which  was  the  scene  of  Blake's  victory  over  the 
Dutch,  and  where  the  father  of  our  great  William  Penn 
won  his  laurels  as  an  admiral,  Avas  now  the  scene  of  the  ex- 
ploits of  an  American  captain  fighting  beneath  an  Amer- 
ican flag  for  American  rights  inherited  from  old  mother 
England,  who,  in  a  moment  of  forgetfulness,  had  sought 
to  deprive  her  offspring  of  liberty.  I  know  of  no  more 
thrilling  incident  in  revolutionary  naval  annals  than  the 
fight  between  the  "  Serapis  "  and  the  "Bon  Homme  Richard," 
when  Paul  Jones,  on  the  burning  deck  of  a  sinking  ship, 
lashed  his  yard  arms  to  those  of  the  enemy  and  fought 
hand  to  hand,  man  to  man,  until  the  British  colors  struck, 
and  then,  under  the  very  cliffs  of  Old  England,  were  run  up 
for  the  first  time  the  Stars  and  Stripes — with  a  field  of  blue 
into  which  the  skilful  fingers  of  Betsey  Ross,  of  Philadel- 
phia, had  woven  inextinguishable  stars ;  the  red  stripes 
typifying  the  glory,  the  valor  and  the  self-sacrifice  of  the 
men  who  died  that  liberty  might  live  ;  and   the  white,  em- 


OUR    NAVY  137 

blematic  of  purit}%  fitly  representing  those  principles  to  pre- 
serve which  these  men  had  sanctified  themselves  by  an  im- 
mortal self-dedication.  And  there,  too,  in  the  Continental 
Navy  was  Richard  Dale,  the  young  "  Middy,"  who  fought 
beside  Paul  Joiies  ;  and  Joshua  Barney,  and  John  l^)arry, 
and  Nicholas  Biddle  of  Philadelphia,  who  later,  in  the  gallant 
little  "  Randolph,"  in  order  to  help  a  convoyed  fleet  of  Amer- 
ican merchantmen  to  escape,  boldly  attacked  the  battleship 
"Yarmouth  ;"  and  when  it  was  found  that  he  was  doomed  to 
defeat,  blew  up  his  vessel,  perishing  with  all  his  crew,  rather 
than  strike  the  colors  of  the  newly-born  republic. 

All  honor  to  the  navy  of  the  United  States  !  I  never  can 
read  of  its  exploits — peaceful  citizen  as  I  am — without  my 
blood  bubbling  with  a  joyous  sense  of  exultation  at  the 
thought  that  the  flag  which  has  swept  the  seas,  carrying 
liberty  behind  it,  is  the  flag  which  is  destined  to  sweep  the 
seas  again  and  carry  liberty,  civilization  and  all  the  blessings 
of  free  government  into  benighted  islands  far,  far  from 
hence. 

Why,  gentlemen,  the  story  of  the  exploits  of  our  little 
fleets  reads  like  a  romance.  At  the  end  of  the  Revolution- 
ary War  eight  hundred  British  ships,  fifteen  of  them  battle- 
ships, had  surrendered  to  the  prowess  of  the  American  navy, 
together  with  twelve  thousand  five  hundred  prisoners  cap- 
tured by  less  than  three  thousand  men  ;  and  in  that  war  our 
country  had  produced  the  boldest  admirals  that,  up  to  that 
time,  civilization  had  known,  and  the  greatest  fighting  naval 
heroes  that  the  world  had  seen. 

Then  came  the  war  of  18 12,  to  establish  sailors'  rights 
upon  the  high  seas,  when  the  American  navy  again  proved 
victor  despite  overwhelming  odds.  I  have  in  my  possession 
a  list  of  the  British  and  American  vessels  at  the  outbreak  of 
that  war ;  and  if  I  were  to  represent  them  by  something 
tangible  in  order  to  indicate  the  proportions  of  each,  I  would 
say,  taking  this  box  lid  for  example  [illustrating  with  the 
stem  of  a  rose  upon  the  cover  of  a  discarded  flower  box], 
that  if  you  were  to  draw  a  line  across  here,  near  the  top, 
you  would  have  sufficient  space  in  the  narrow  strip  above 
the  dividing  line  to  write  the  names  of  all  the  American 
ships,  while  the  entire  remaining  space  would  not  be  more 
than  sufficient  for  the  English  fleet,  which  was  more   than 


138  HAMPTON    L.    CARSON 

thirty  times  the  size  of  its  antagonist.  The  ships  which  un- 
der Nelson  had  fought  at  the  Nile  and  had  won  imperish- 
able glory  at  Trafalgar,  coming  into  our  waters,  struck  their 
flags  time  and  again.  The  glorious  old  "  Ironsides  "  (the 
"Constitution")  captured  the  "  Guerriere,"  the  "Java," 
the  "  Cyane,"  and  "  Levant."  The  United  States  took  the 
"  Macedonian  ;"  the  "Wasp  "  destroyed  the  "  Frolic,"  while 
on  the  lakes  we  point  with  pride  to  the  victories  of  Perry  and 
McDonough.  When  battle  after  battle  had  been  fought  it 
was  found  that,  of  eighteen  fixed  engagements,  seventeen 
were  victories  for  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  And  this  over  the 
greatest  maritime  war  power  of  the  world  ! 

Philadelphia  is  honorably  associated  with  the  glories  of 
our  navy.  Our  early  battleships,  though  not  all  built  here, 
were  planned  and  constructed  by  the  brain  of  Joshua 
Humphreys,  a  Philadelphian,  who  in  his  day  was  the  pre- 
decessor of  our  great  ship-builder  of  to-day,  Charles  H. 
Cramp. 

Need  I  speak  of  the  navy  from  1861  to  1865,  or  tell  of  the 
exploits  of  those  gallant  fleets  which  clove  a  pathway  down 
the  valley  of  the  Ohio,  of  the  Tennessee  and  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, in  order  that  liberty  might  ride  unvexed  from  the 
lakes  to  the  gulf  ?  Need  I  dwell  upon  the  part  taken  by  the 
guest  of  this  evening,  who  was  an  officer  who  fought  under 
Farragut  ? 

In  our  recent  war  with  Spain  there  were  some  who,  in 
doubting  moments,  yielded  to  that  atrabilious  disposition 
which  has  been  so  well  described  by  Mr.  Tomkins  ;  who 
thought  that  our  ships  were  not  strong  enough  to  hazard  an 
encounter  with  the  fleets  of  Spain.  But  meanwhile  there 
was  doubling  "  around  the  Horn  "  a  battleship,  with  a  cap- 
tain and  a  crew  whose  marvellous  voyage  was  attracting  the 
eyes  of  the  world.  Night  after  night  we  took  up  the  map, 
traced  his  course  from  port  to  port,  and  our  hearts  beat 
high,  our  lips  were  firmly  compressed,  the  color  faded  from 
our  cheeks  with  excitement,  but  our  eyes  blazed  with  ex- 
ultant anticipation  as  nearer  and  nearer  to  Pernambuco  did 
he  come.  We  all  now  feel,  judging  of  the  possibilities  by 
actual  achievement,  that  had  Captain  Clark  encountered  the 
enemy's  ships,  he  could  and  would  have  successfully  fought 
and  defeated  the  entire  Spanish  fleet.     He  carried  his  ship 


OUR    NAVY  139 

ready  for  instant  action,  every  man  at  his  post,  God  bless 
that  crew  !  God  bless  those  stokers,  far  down  below  those 
decks,  confident  that  the  captain  who  commanded  them  was 
on  the  bridge,  and  that  he  would  never  flinch  nor  fail  in  the 
hour  of  trial  1  I  have  often  tried  to  draw  a  mental  picture  of 
what  the  scene  must  have  been  when  the  "  Oregon  "  steamed 
in  to  join  the  fleet  before  Santiago;  when  the  white  jackets 
on  the  yard-arms  tossed  their  caps  in  the  air,  and  southern 
tars  gave  back  to  Yankee  cheers  a  lusty  welcome  to  the  man 
who  for  so  long,  against  all  odds,  with  no  encouraging  ad- 
vices, with  unknown  terrors  all  about  him,  had  never  flinched 
from  duty,  and  who,  when  the  last  summons  came,  re- 
sponded in  the  words  of  Colonel  Newcomb,  Adsiivi — "  I 
am  here." 

On  the  morning  of  the  third  of  July,  1898,  there  stood  the 
frowning  Morro  Castle,  the  prison  of  the  glorious  Hobson  ; 
on  the  other  side  the  fortress  of  Estrella  ;  the  narrow  channel 
blocked  by  the  wreck  of  the  "  Merrimac; "  the  "  Brooklyn," 
the  "Oregon,"  the  "Texas,"  the  "  Indiana,"  the  "  Iowa  " 
and  the  "  Massachusetts  "  all  watching  that  orifice.  Then 
black  smoke  rolled  from  the  funnels  of  the  enemy's  ships,  in- 
dicating that  the  tiger  had  roused  him  from  his  lair  and  was 
making  a  rush  for  the  open  sea.  Up  went  the  signal  on  the 
flagstaff  of  the  "  Brooklyn,"  "  Forward — the  enemy  is  ap- 
proaching." Then  engines  moved  ;  then  guns  thundered 
their  volleys  ;  then  sky  and  sea  became  black  with  the 
smoke  of  battle  ;  and  swiftly  steamed  the  "  Oregon "  in 
pursuit  of  the  "  Cristobal  Colon."  Beneath  well-directed 
shots  the  monster  reeled,  like  a  wounded  athlete,  to  the 
beach  ;  and  then  from  the  flagstaff  of  the  "  New  York"  were 
displayed  those  signals  now  on  these  walls  before  your  eyes 
— "  1-7-3  ;  cornet  ;  2m-9m-7m  " — which,  translated,  meant — • 
and  we  of  the  League  to-night  repeat  the  words — "  Well 
done,  '  Oregon.'  "     [Cheers.] 

Captain  Clark,  the  city  of  Philadelphia  has  always  con- 
tributed her  share  to  the  building  of  the  navy  and  to  a  fit- 
ting recognition  of  the  heroes  who  have  commanded  our 
battleships.  In  the  old  churchyard  of  St.  Mary's,  on  Fourth 
Street,  sleep  the  bones  of  John  Barry  ;  and  in  the  older 
churchyard  of  St.  Peter's  stands  the  monument  to  Decatur. 
We  have  with  us  also  the  ashes  of  Stewart,  who  commanded 


140  HAMPTON    L.    CARSON 

"  Old  Ironsides"  when  she  captured  the  "  Cyane  "  and  the 
"  Levant  ;"  and  we  have  those  of  Bauibridge,  who  captured 
the  "  Java." 

In  reading  of  the  exploits  of  the  master  spirits  of  the  past, 
1  have  sometimes  w^ondered  whether  we  had  men  of  to-day 
who  were  their  equals.  My  answer  is  this  :  I  say  to  soldiers 
and  sailors,  whether  of  our  Civil  War  or  of  the  late  war  with 
Spain,  you  arc  worthy  of  your  sires,  you  have  caught  the 
inspiration  of  their  glowing  deeds,  you  have  taken  up  the 
burden  which  they  threw  upon  your  shoulders,  and  though 
in  time  to  come  you  may  sleep  in  unmarked  graves,  the 
memory  of  your  deeds  will  live ;  and,  like  your  sires,  you 
have  become  immortal. 

To  fight  for  liberty  is  indeed  a  privilege.  "  Disguise  thy- 
self as  thou  wilt,  still.  Slavery,  thou  art  a  bitter  draught ; 
and,  though  thousands  in  all  ages  have  been  made  to  drink 
thee,  thou  art  no  less  bitter  on  that  account.  'Tis  thou,  O 
Liberty !  thrice  sweet  and  gracious  goddess,  whose  taste  is 
grateful,  and  ever  wall  be  so  till  nature  herself  shall  change. 
No  tint  of  words  can  spot  thy  snowy  mantle,  nor  chemic 
power  turn  thy  sceptre  into  iron.  With  thee  to  smile  upon 
him,  as  he  eats  his  crust,  the  swain  is  happier  than  the  mon- 
arch from  whose  courts  thou  art  exiled."  So  wrote  Lawrence 
Sterne. 

And  then  Rufus  Choate  :  "  To  form  and  uphold  a  state, 
it  is  not  enough  that  our  judgments  should  believe  it  to  be 
useful ;  the  better  part  of  our  affections  should  feel  it  to  be 
lovely.  It  is  not  enough  that  our  arithmetic  should  com- 
pute its  value  and  find  it  high  ;  our  hearts  should  hold  it 
priceless — above  all  things  rich  and  rare — dearer  than  health 
and  beauty,  brighter  than  all  the  order  of  the  stars."  In 
contemplating  those  mysterious  dispensations  of  Providence 
by  which  the  light  which  broke  upon  this  continent  two 
hundred  years  ago  is  now  penetrating  and  illuminating  the 
darkest  corners  of  the  earth,  it  will  be  a  supreme  satisfaction 
for  us  to  know  that  our  children  and  our  children's  children 
will  have  set  for  their  imitation  and  encouragement  the 
example  of  the  heroism,  the  manliness,  the  courage,  the 
patriotism  and  the  modesty  of  the  captains  of  to-day.  [Long- 
continued  cheering.] 


JOSEPH   CHAMBERLAIN 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  BRITISH  EMPIRE 

[On  November  6,  1S95,  Joseph  Chamberlain  was  the  principal  guest  at 
a  dinner  given  in  London,  by  Walter  Peace,  the  Agent-General  for  Natal, 
in  celebration  of  the  completion  of  the  Natal-Transvaal  Railway.  This 
was  the  first  public  occasion  on  which  IVIr.  Chamberlain  appeared  in  his 
official  capacity  as  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies  ;  and,  in  replying 
to  the  toast  of  "  The  Right  Hon.  Joseph  Chamberlain,  Secretary  of  State 
for  the  Colonies,"  which  was  proposed  by  Sir  Charles  Tupper,  High 
Commissioner  of  Canada,  Mr.  Chamberlain  took  "  The  Future  of  the 
British  Empire  "  as  his  theme.] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  : — I  thank  you  sincerely 
for  the  hearty  reception  you  have  given  to  this  toast.  I 
appreciate  very  much  the  warmth  of  your  welcome,  and  I 
see  in  it  confirmation  of  the  evidence  which  is  afforded  by 
the  cordial  and  graceful  telegram  from  the  Premier  of  Natal, 
which  has  been  read  by  your  chairman,  and  by  other  public 
and  private  communications  that  I  have  received,  that  any 
man  who  makes  it  his  first  duty,  as  I  do,  to  draw  closer  to- 
gether the  different  portions  of  the  British  Empire  ["  Hear ! 
Hear!"]  will  meet  with  hearty  sympathy,  encouragement 
and  support.  [Cheers.]  I  thank  my  old  friend  and  colleague, 
Sir  Charles  Tupper,  for  the  kind  manner  in  which  he  has 
spoken  of  me.  Pie  has  said  much,  no  doubt,  that  transcends 
my  merits,  but  that  is  a  circumstance  so  unusual  in  the  life 
of  a  politician  [laughter]  that  I  do  not  feel  it  in  my  heart  to 
complain.  [Laughter,]  I  remember  that  Dr.  Oliver  Wen- 
dell Holmes,  who  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  genial 
Americans  who  ever  visited  these  shores,  said  that  when  he 
was  young  he  liked  his  praise  in  teaspoonfuls,  that  when  he 
got  older  he  preferred  it  in  tablespoonfuls,  and  that  in  ad- 
vanced years  he  was  content  to  receive  it  in  ladles.     [Laugh- 

141 


142 


JOSEPH    CHAMBERLAIN 


ter.]  I  confess  that  I  am  arriving  at  the  period  when  I 
sympathize  with  Dr.  Ohver  Wendell  Holmes.  [Laughter 
and  cheers.] 

Gentlemen,  the  occasion  which  has  brought  us  together 
is  an  extremely  interesting  one.  We  are  here  to  congratulate 
Natal,  its  Government  and  its  people,  and  to  congratulate 
ourselves  on  the  completion  of  a  great  work  of  commercial 
enterprise  and  civilization,  which  one  of  our  colonies,  which 
happens  to  be  the  last  to  have  been  included  in  the  great 
circle  of  self-governing  communities,  has  brought  to  a  suc- 
cessful conclusion,  giving  once  more  a  proof  of  the  vigor  and 
the  resolution  which  have  distinguished  all  the  nations  that 
have  sprung  from  the  parent  British  stock.     [Cheers.] 

This  occasion  has  been  honored  by  the  presence  of  the 
representatives  of  sister  colonies,  who  are  here  to  offer 
words  of  sympathy  and  encouragement ;  and,  in  view  of  the 
representative  character  of  the  gathering,  I  think,  perhaps, 
I  may  be  permitted,  especially  as  this  is  the  first  occasion 
upon  which  I  have  publicly  appeared  in  my  capacity  as 
Minister  for  the  colonies  [cheers]  to  offer  a  few  words  of  a 
general  application.     ["  Hear  !     Hear  !  "] 

I  think  it  will  not  be  disputed  that  we  are  approaching  a 
critical  stage  in  the  history  of  the  relations  between  our- 
selves and  the  self-governing  colonies.  We  are  entering 
upon  a  chapter  of  our  colonial  history,  the  whole  of  which 
will  probably  be  written  in  the  next  few  years,  certainly  in 
the  lifetime  of  the  next  generation,  and  which  will  be  one 
of  the  most  important  in  our  colonial  annals,  since  upon  the 
events  and  policy  which  it  describes  will  depend  the  future 
of  the  British  Empire.  That  Empire,  gentlemen,  that 
world-wide  dominion  to  which  no  Englishman  can  allude 
without  a  thrill  of  enthusiasm  and  patriotism,  which  has 
been  the  admiration,  and  perhaps  the  envy,  of  foreign 
nations,  hangs  together  by  a  thread  so  slender  that  it  may 
well  seem  that  even  a  breath  would  sever  it. 

There  have  been  periods  in  our  history,  not  so  very  far 
distant,  when  leading  statesmen,  despairing  of  the  possibility 
of  maintaining  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  permanent  union, 
have  looked  forward  to  the  time  when  the  vigorous  com- 
munities to  which  they  rightly  intrusted  the  control  of  their 
own  destinies  would  grow  strong  and  independent,  would 


THE    FUTURE    OF   THE    BRITISH    EMPIRE  I43 

assert  their  independence,  and  would  claim  entire  separation 
from  the  parent  stem.  The  time  to  which  they  looked  for- 
ward  has  arrived  sooner  than  they  expected.  Tlic  condi- 
tions to  which  they  referred  have  been  more  tlian  fulfilled  ; 
and  now  these  great  communities,  which  have  within  them 
every  element  of  national  life,  have  taken  their  rank  amongst 
the  nations  of  the  world  ;  and  I  do  not  suppose  that  any  one 
would  consider  the  idea  of  compelling  them  to  remain  with- 
in the  empire  as  within  the  region  of  intelligent  specula- 
tion. Yet,  although,  as  I  have  said,  the  time  has  come, 
and  the  conditions  have  been  fulfilled,  the  results  which 
these  statesmen  anticipated  have  not  followed.  [Cheers.] 
They  felt,  perhaps,  overwhelmed  by  the  growing  burdens 
of  the  vast  dominions  of  the  British  Crown.  They  may 
well  have  shrunk  from  the  responsibilities  and  the  obliga- 
tions which  they  involve ;  and  so  it  happened  that  some  of 
them  looked  forward  not  only  without  alarm,  but  with  hope- 
ful expectation,  to  a  severance  of  the  union  which  now  exists. 

But  if  such  feelings  were  ever  entertained  they  are  enter- 
tained no  longer.  [Cheers.]  As  the  possibility  of  separa- 
tion has  become  greater,  the  desire  for  separation  has  be- 
come less.  [Renewed  cheers.]  While  we  on  our  part  are 
prepared  to  take  our  share  of  responsibility,  and  to  do  all 
that  may  fairly  be  expected  from  the  mother  country,  and 
while  we  should  look  upon  a  separation  as  the  greatest  calam- 
ity that  could  befall  us  ["  Hear  !  Hear  !  "]  our  fellow-subjects 
on  their  part  see  to  what  a  great  inheritance  they  have  come 
by  mere  virtue  of  their  citizenship  ;  and  they  m.ust  feel  that 
no  separate  existence,  however  splendid,  could  compare 
with  that  which  they  enjoy  equally  with  ourselves  as  joint 
heirs  of  all  the  traditions  of  the  past,  and  as  joint  partakers 
of  all  the  influence,  resources  and  power  of  the  British 
Empire.      [Cheers.] 

I  rejoice  at  the  change  that  has  taken  place.  I  rejoice  at 
the  wider  patriotism,  no  longer  confined  to  this  small  island, 
which  embraces  the  whole  of  Greater  Britain  and  which 
has  carried  to  every  clime  British  institutions  and  the  best 
characteristics  of  the  British  race.  [Renewed  cheering.] 
How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  We  have  a  common  origin, 
we  have  a  common  history,  a  common  language,  a  common 
literature,  and  a  common  love  of  liberty  and  law.     We  have 


144  JOSEPH    CHAMBERLAIN 

common  principles  to  assert,  we  have  common  interests  to 
maintain.  ["Hear!  Hear."]  I  said  it  was  a  slender  thread 
that  binds  us  together.  I  remember  on  one  occasion  hav- 
ing been  shown  a  wire  so  fine  and  delicate  that  a  blow 
might  break  it ;  yet  I  was  told  that  it  was  capable  of  trans- 
mitting an  electrical  energy  that  would  set  powerful  machin- 
ery in  motion.  May  it  not  be  the  same  with  the  relations 
which  exist  between  the  colonies  and  ourselves  ;  and  may 
not  that  thread  of  union  be  capable  of  carrying  a  force  of 
sentiment  and  of  sympathy  which  will  yet  be  a  potent  factor 
in  the  history  of  the  world  ?     ["  Hear  !     Hear  !  "] 

There  is  a  word  which  I  am  almost  afraid  to  mention, 
lest  at  the  very  outset  of  my  career  I  should  lose  my  char- 
acter as  a  practical  statesman.  I  am  told  on  every  hand 
that  Imperial  Federation  is  a  vain  and  empty  dream.  [Cries 
of  "No!  No!"]  I  will  not  contest  that  judgment,  but  I  will 
say  this:  that  that  man  must  be  blind,  indeed,  who  does 
not  see  that  it  is  a  dream  which  has  vividly  impressed  itself 
on  the  mind  of  the  English-speaking  race,  and  who  does 
not  admit  that  dreams  of  that  kind,  which  have  so  powerful 
an  influence  upon  the  imagination  of  men,  have  somehow  or 
another  an  unaccountable  way  of  being  realized  in  their  own 
time.  ["Hear!  Hear!"]  If  it  be  a  dream,  it  is  a  dream 
that  appeals  to  the  highest  sentiments  of  patriotism,  as  well 
as  to  our  material  interests.  It  is  a  dream  which  is  calcu- 
lated to  stimulate  and  to  inspire  every  one  who  cares  for 
the  future  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  people.  [Cheers.]  I  think 
myself  that  the  spirit  of  the  time  is,  at  all  events,  in  the 
direction  of  such  a  movement.  How  far  it  will  carry  us  no 
man  can  tell ;  but,  believe  me,  upon  the  temper  and  the 
tone  in  which  we  approach  the  solution  of  the  problems 
which  are  now  coming  upon  us  depend  the  security  and  the 
maintenance  of  that  world-wide  dominion,  that  edifice  of 
Imperial  rule,  which  has  been  so  ably  built  for  us  by  those 
who  have  gone  before.     [Cheers.] 

Gentlemen,  I  admit  that  I  have  strayed  somewhat  widely 
from  the  toast  which  your  chairman  has  committed  to  my 
charge.  ["  No."]  That  toast  is  "The  Prosperity  of  South 
Africa  and  the  Natal  and  Transvaal  Railway."  As  to  South 
Africa,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  its  prosperity.  We 
have  witnessed  in  our  own  time  a  development  of  natural 


THE    FUTURE    OF   THE    BRITISH    EMI'IRE         I45 

and  mineral  wealth  in  that  country  altogether  beyond  pre- 
cedent or  human  knowledge  ;  and  what  we  have  seen  in 
the  past,  and  what  we  see  in  the  present,  is  bound  to  be  far 
surpassed  in  the  near  future.  ["Hear!  Hear!"]  The 
product  of  the  mines,  great  as  it  is  at  present,  is  certain  to  be 
multiplied  many  fold,  and  before  many  years  are  over  the 
mines  of  the  Transvaal  may  be  rivalled  by  the  mines  of 
Mashonaland  or  Matabeleland  ;  and  in  the  train  of  this 
great,  exceptional  and  wonderful  prosperity,  in  the  train  of 
the  diamond-digger  and  of  the  miner,  will  come  a  demand 
for  labor  which  no  man  can  measure — a  demand  for  all  the 
products  of  agriculture  and  of  manufacture,  in  which  not 
South  Africa  alone,  but  all  the  colonies  and  the  mother 
country  itself   must   have   a  share.      [Cheers.] 

The  climate  and  soil  leave  nothing  to  be  desired,  and 
there  is  only  one  thing  wanted — that  is,  a  complete  union 
and  identity  of  sentiment  and  interest  between  the  different 
States  existing  in  South  Africa.  [Cheers.]  Gentlemen,  I 
have  no  doubt  that  that  union  will  be  forthcoming  [cheers], 
although  it  may  not  be  immediately  established.  I  do  not 
shut  my  eyes  to  differences  amongst  friends  which  have 
unfortunately  already  arisen,  and  which  have  not  yet 
been  arranged.  I  think  these  differences,  if  you  look  below 
the  surface,  will  be  found  to  be  due  principally  to  the  fact 
that  we  have  not  yet  achieved  in  South  Africa  that  local 
federation  which  is  the  necessary  preface  to  any  serious 
consideration  of  the  question  of  Imperial  federation. 
[Cheers.]  But,  gentlemen,  in  these  differences,  my  position, 
of  course,  renders  it  absolutely  necessary  that  I  should  take 
no  side.  [Cheers.]  I  pronounce  no  opinion,  and  it  would 
not  become  me  to  offer  any  advice  ;  although,  if  the  good 
ofifices  of  my  department  were  at  any  time  invoked  by 
those  who  are  now  separated,  all  I  can  say  is  that  they 
would  be  heartily  placed  at  their  service.     [Cheers.] 

Gentlemen,  I  wish  success  to  the  Natal  Railway,  and  to 
every  railway  in  South  Africa.  [Cheers.]  There  is  room  for 
all.  [Cheers.]  There  is  prosperity  for  all  ["  Hear !  Hear!"] 
— enough  to  make  the  mouth  of  an  English  director  posi- 
tively water.  -^[Laughter.]  There  is  success  for  all,  if  only 
they  will  not  waste  their  resources  in  internecine  conflict. 
["  Hear !     Hear !  "]     I  have  seen  with  pleasure  that  a  confer- 


140  JOSEPH   CHAMBERLAIN 

ence  is  being  held  in  order  to  discuss,  and  I  hope  to  settle, 
these  differences.  I  trust  that  they  may  be  satisfactorily 
arranged.  In  the  meantime  I  congratulate  our  chairman,  as 
representing  this  prosperous  colony,  upon  the  enterprise  they 
hav^e  displayed,  upon  the  dif^culties  they  have  surmounted, 
and  on  the  success  they  have  already  achieved.  [Cheers.] 
And  I  hope  for  them — confidently  hope — the  fullest  share 
in  that  prosperity  which  I  predict  without  hesitation  for  the 
whole  of  South  Africa.     [Cheers.] 


JOSEPH  HODGES  CHOATE 
Photogravure  after  an  engraving  by  Williams 


JOSEPH  HODGES   CHOATE 


A  TEST  EXAMINATION 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate  at  the  Harvard  Alumni  dinner,  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  June  30,  1875.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Alumni  : — If 
our  worthy  Alma  Mater  looked  forth  this  morning,  as  I 
have  no  doubt  she  did,  upon  our  passing  column,  she  must 
have  congratulated  herself  upon  the  fact  that  all  the  boys 
were  here, — even  the  old  boy  himself  was  here.  I  refer, 
sir,  to  no  person  ;  I  mean  nothing  personal,  none  of  those 
gray-headed  men  who  immediately  surround  your  table,  but 
I  speak  of  that  venerable  and  reverend  company  of  ancient 
graduates  who  preceded  the  class  of  1835,  and  who,  there- 
fore, upon  their  own  merits,  are  allowed  to  eat  and  drink  freely 
in  honor  of  Alma  Mater.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  To 
us,  sir,  children  of  a  later  growth,  who  are  mindful  of  the 
almighty  dollar,  it  lends  a  new  charm  to  life,  a  new  ambi- 
tion, and  something  purer  and  grander  than  we  have  had 
before,  to  which  we  may  work  up.  For,  gentlemen,  before 
the  only  real  prize  for  seniority  among  Harvard  graduates 
was  the  position  of  the  oldest-surviving  graduate;  and  as 
playing  for  that,  sir,  was  extremely  a  game  of  chance,  there 
were  very  few  who  had  the  temerity  to  aim  at  it.  Now,  sir, 
to  recollect  that  forty-three  years  of  faithful  service,  paying 
always  for  our  dinners  as  we  go,  will  enable  us  to  spend  the 
evening  of  our  days  in  free  and  sumptuous  feeding  at  these 
tables,  is  indeed,  an  incentive  to  the  highest  happiness. 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  I  take  it  for  granted,  sir,  that  it 
was  for  age  of  service  that  that  compliment  was  paid 
them,  for,  judging  from  symptoms  I  have  observed  to-day, 
if  it  was  upon  the  idea  that  these  gentlemen  have  outlived 

147 


148  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

their  appetites,  that  was  a  mistake  which  has  told  witli 
frightful  effect  upon  the  general  dinner.     [Loud  laughter.] 

Mr.  President,  to  graduates,  distant  in  time  or  place,  re- 
turning upon  these  festive  days,  one  of  the  most  delightful 
things  that  we  observe  is  the  universal  emulation  of  youth 
that  marks  the  Avhole  concern  ;  how  each  man,  each  class, 
is  struggling  to  be  a  little  younger  than  they  really  are. 
How  to  preserve  youth,  the  art  of  keeping  perpetually 
young,  is,  indeed,  a  secret  worth  discovering.  Lord  Bacon, 
sir,  understood  it,  as  he  understood  almost  everything  that 
pertains  to  human  nature  ;  and  he  concentrated  the  whole 
thing  in  a  little  story  that  he  told  in  one  of  his  famous 
apothegms  on  Sir  Thomas  More.  As  I  have  heard  it  told 
at  a  commencement  dinner,  I  will  tell  it  here.  "  Sir  Thomas 
More,"  he  said,  "  married,  and  at  the  first  had  daughters 
only  ;  and  his  wife  did  ever  pray  for  a  boy.  At  last  she  had 
a  boy,  which,  after  it  reached  man's  years,  proved  simple. 
Sir  Thomas  said  to  his  wife,  '  Thou  prayedst  so  long  for  a  boy 
that  he  will  be  a  boy  as  long  as  he  lives.'  "  [Laughter.] 
I  could  not  help  observing  here  to-day,  Mr.  President, 
how  this  struggle  for  youth  marked  the  advancing  column. 
How  frisky  the  aged  graduate  appeared,  how  boyish  the 
men  of  middle  age,  and  how  perfectly  childish  the  last  of 
the  column.     [Loud  laughter  and  applause.] 

Mr.  President,  we,  who  are  getting  to  be  among  the 
older  graduates,  refer  with  longing  to  the  past ;  and  great 
and  growing  as  is  the  college,  or  the  university  in  which  it 
is  now  lost,  we  can't  help  thinking  that  our  brightest  days 
were  when  we  were  under  her  cool  and  shady  trees.  And, 
for  one,  I  shall  always,  whatever  fate  may  come  upon  the 
college,  remain  of  the  honest  conviction  that  the  Presi- 
dency of  Jared  Sparks  was  the  best  time  of  the  college. 
[Laughter.]  And,  sir,  in  those  days  the  government  of  the 
college  was  administered  on  very  different  principles  than 
those  which  are  now  maintained.  The  standard  was  es- 
tablished upon  the  orthodox  theory  that  the  capability  of 
every  class  is  to  be  measured  by  the  strength  of  the  weak- 
est links  in  the  chain,  and  the  curriculum  was  adapted  to 
the  understandingof  the  stupidest.  That  worthy  president, 
Mr.  Chairman,  whose  precepts  and  examples  have  been  so 
much  neglected  in  recent  days,  made  a  practical  application, 


A   TEST    EXAMINATION  149 

in  his  treatment  of  the  student,  of  what  Mr.  Quincy,  I  be- 
lieve, had  once  jocosely  pronounced  when  he  said  that  his 
maxim  was:  "  Be  to  their  faults  a  little  blind,  be  to  their 
virtues  very  blind,  but  clap  the  padlock  on  the  mind." 
[Laughter.]  The  key,  sir,  to  that  padlock  was  lost  in 
Quincy's  time  ;  Sparks  never  looked  for  it,  and  when  I  hear 
of  the  miseries  of  the  undergraduates  of  the  present  day,  I 
almost  regret  that  Eliot  found  it  and  set  out  to  insert  it  in 
the  rusty  wards  of  the  lock.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  I 
don't  mean  to  say,  sir,  that  we  were  kept  away  from  the 
fountain  of  learning  ;  far  from  it.  We  learned  few  things, 
and  tried  to  learn  them  well ;  but  then,  too,  there  were  hidden 
mysteries  in  those  days  as  in  these  more  recent. 

I  remember  Professor  Pierce,  whose  venerable  form  I  now 
rejoice  to  see  in  freshness  among  us.  [Great  applause.] 
He  and  his  functions  were  the  ;/^ //;/5' ?/'//r(7.  [Laughter.] 
I  believe  that  a  modern  upstart  among  philosophers,  Her- 
bert Spencer,  has  claimed  to  be  the  first  originator  and 
teacher  of  the  unknowable.  Professor  Pierce  was  ahead  of 
him  by  many  years.  [Great  laughter  and  applause.]  He, 
sir,  had  three  different  forms  of  a  mathematical  problem  by 
which  he  used  to  test  our  progress :  the  first  and  simplest 
were  those  that  only  the  first  eight  in  the  class  could  under- 
stand ;  the  second  were  those  which  nobody  but  the  pro- 
fessor himself  could  master,  and  the  third  were  those  which 
neither  he  nor  anybody  else  could  understand.  [Laughter.] 
Now,  sir,  I  am  truly  horrified  in  taking  up  one  of  these 
annual  catalogues,  to  see  the  tests  that  are  applied  to  the 
modern  mind.  I  verily  believe  that  any  simple-minded 
graduate  of  more  than  twenty-years'  standing  would  find  it 
more  difficult  to  pass  any  one  of  the  junior  examinations 
that  we  have  laid  down,  than  really  it  would  be  for  a  camel 
to  pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle.  [Laughter.]  I  wish, 
sir,  that  justice  might  be  done  to  these  trembling  youths 
[laughter],  and  that  for  once  the  tables  might  be  turned 
upon  the  board  of  overseers  [loud  and  prolonged  applause], 
under  whose  authority  these  excruciating  tests  are  applied 
to  the  infant  minds.  I  take  up  the  last  annual  catalogue 
[pulling  the  book  from  his  pocket],  with  a  view  to  see 
whether  there  were  probably  any  of  the  venerable  and  honor- 
able overseers,  as  they  used  to  be  called,  who  could   answer 


150  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

the  simplest  of  these  questions,  and  I  would  like  to  have  it 
applied  here  and  now.  [Great  applause  and  laughter.] 
Begin,  sir,  with  the  venerable  head  of  the  university. 
[Roars  of  laughter.]  That,  sir,  was  the  formal  mode  of 
speaking  of  the  President  when  I  was  in  college.  I  don't 
know  how  it  suits  him  to  be  addressed  in  that  way  by  one 
who  was  a  sophomore  when  he  was  a  freshman.  But  really, 
gentlemen,  if  wisdom,  if  the  gray  head  of  man  and  honest 
living  are  true  old  age,  why  he  is  already  as  old  as  Quincy 
and  as  venerable  as  Walker.     [Applause.] 

Now  let  us  have  a  little  examination  in  philosophy. 
Why,  Mr.  President,  there  was  something  called  philosophy 
taught  in  our  day  by  Professor  Bowen.  That  was  before 
the  true  function  of  the  brain  as  the  seat  of  the  mind  had 
been  discovered  ;  but  we  were  taught  a  spurious  and  effete 
kind  of  mental  philosophy  which  consisted  in  evolving 
something  out  of  our  own  consciousness  which  was  not 
there.  [Loud  laughter.]  Let  us  see  whether  the  venerable 
head  of  the  university  could  answer  a  single  one  of  these 
questions,  and  if  he  can  he  will  rise  to  do  it.  [Roars  of 
laughter.] 

"  Explain  the  Paralogism  of  Rational  Psychology,  the  Antinomies  of 
Rational  Cosmology  (proving  the  thesis  and  antithesis  of  one  of  them,  as 
an  example)  ;  and  the  ontological,  cosmological,  and  physico-theological 
proofs  of  the  Ideal  of  Pure  Reason,  or  Idea  of  God,  together  with  Kant's 
objections  to  each  of  these  three  modes  of  proof." 

I  am  sorry  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  the  genial  Pres- 
ident of  the  board  of  overseers,  has  left  in  time  to  escape 
the  examination,  and  in  his  absence  I  would  like  to  ask 
Judge  Hoar  to  tell  me  this  : — 

"  Explain  briefly  the  theory  of  atomistic  dynamism,  and  how  it  re- 
duces matter  to  mere  Will  and  Presentation.  Of  what  only  do  the  senses 
and  the  physical  sciences  take  cognizance  as  constituting  the  primitive 
element  of  Matter  ?  What  must  ideally  or  in  thought  precede  every 
motion  or  physical  force  ?  " 

Judge  Hoar: — "  Not  prepared."  [Loud  laughter  and  ap- 
plause.] 

Then,  sir,  I  would  like  to  ask  Dr.  Samuel  Green,  that 
youthful  and  ubiquitous  member  of  the  board,  to  answer  a 
plain  question  in  "  harmony  "  which  is  now  required  : — 


A   TEST    EXAMINATION  151 

"  Resolve  the  dominant  seventh  chord  of  G  into  other  seventh  chords 
and  give  an  example  of  the  progression  of  three  of  tlie  secondary  chords 
of  the  seventh  into  other  chords  than  those  of  the  regv:lar  progression." 

Why,  sir,  I  might  go  on  exhausting,  not  these  questions, 
but  the  honorable  board  of  overseers  [laughter]  till  I  could 
demonstrate  to  you  that  not  one  of  these  gentlemen  is,  as 
he  is  found  at  present  sitting  at  the  table,  fitted  to  enter 
into,  much  less  to  escape  out  of,  their  difficulties.  [Renewed 
laughter,] 

Mr.  President,  I  am  very  glad  you  wrote  down  the  toast 
that  I  was  to  speak  on.  You  wrote  me  that  I  was  to  speak 
for  the  graduates,  in  partibus  infidcliuvi,  and  if  I  rightly  re- 
member the  Latin  that  used  to  be  taught  us  by  Dr.  Peck 
and  Professor  Lane,  that  means  "a  region  where  infidelity 
prevails."  I  would  have  you  know,  sir,  that  I  came  from 
the  virtuous  and  orthodox  city  of  New  York.  You  may 
well  study  the  example  and  virtues  of  the  people,  even  the 
alumni  of  Harvard.  We  are  not  so  benighted  as  you,  in 
your  note,  seem  to  suppose.  Why,  sir,  we  have  a  Harvard 
club  organized  after  the  fashion  of  this  association  of  the 
alumni,  and  so  far  as  I  can  see  it  is  a  perfect  miniature. 
Meeting  periodically,  we  resolve  ourselves  into  a  mutual  ad- 
miration society,  and  sing  the  praises  of  our  Alma  Mater. 
We  are  visited  every  year  by  the  worthy  head  of  the  univer- 
sity himself,  who  comes  to  us  as  certain  as  the  twenty-second 
of  February  comes  round.  He  tells  us  all  that  is  being  done 
and  attempted  in  this  our  ancient  college,  and  never  leaves 
us  without  revealing  to  the  sons  the  needy  condition  of  the 
college.  [Laughter.]  And  from  all  that  I  can  learn  it  is 
not  only  his  favorable  theme,  but  her  normal  condition. 
[Laughter.]  We  have  a  chance,  sir,  to  put  our  names  to  all 
the  subscriptions  that  are  started,  although  we  have  not  the 
right  of  representation  on  the  board  of  overseers.  But,  sir, 
if  the  board  of  overseers  is  to  be  subjected  to  a  test,  an  ex- 
ample of  which  I  have  suggested,  it  may  be  a  happy  escape 
for  us.     [Loud  applause.] 


i:;2  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 


TRIBUTE  TO  LORD  HOUGHTON 

[Speech  of  Joseph  II.  Choate  at  the  farewell  reception  given  to  Lord 
Houghton  (Richard  Monckton  INIilnes)  at  the  Union  League  Club,  New 
York,  November  23,  1S75,  the  day  pi-eviousto  his  return  to  England.  In 
a  report  of  this  banquet,  the  "  New  York  Tribune  "  said  :  "  When  the 
speaker  referred  to  America's  position  during  the  war,  Lord  Houghton 
applauded  with  the  rest.  When  Mr.  Choate  expressed  the  gratitude  of 
America  for  the  stand  Lord  Houghton  took  in  favor  of  the  Union  cause 
during  the  Rebellion,  tears  of  pleasure  came  into  the  ej-esof  the  guest."] 

Gentlemen  of  the  Union  League  Club  :—ln  seek- 
ing this  opportunity  to  pay  our  respects  to  the  distinguished 
gentleman  who  now  honors  us  with  his  presence,  we  cer- 
tainly could  not  hope,  by  our  modest  reception,  to  equal  the 
bounteous  hospitality  which  has  been  showered  upon  him  at 
the  hands  of  private  citizens  in  every  city  that  he  has  visited, 
or  to  add  to  the  warmth  of  that  cordial  greeting  which  has 
attended  his  steps  throughout  his  wanderings  in  the  United 
States.  The  familiar  maxim  of  Apelles,  by  which,  in  the 
earlier  years  of  his  manhood,  our  guest  is  believed  to  have 
trained  his  Muse,  appears  to  have  been  practically  applied 
in  an  altered  sense  to  his  lordship,  at  every  stage  of  his 
American  pilgrimage,  7iu//a  die's  sine  linca — no  day  Avithout 
a  line  to  come  to  dinner.  Whatever  pleasures  and  what- 
ever perils  belong  to  that  peculiar  institution  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  as  Emerson  calls  it,  he  must  already  have  fully 
experienced.  We  must  congratulate  ourselves  and  him  that 
he  has  happily  survived  them  all,  with  health  and  strength 
still  unimpaired,  for,  having  done  so,  he  stands  before  us  to- 
night a  living  argument  to  the  robust  and  hardy  vigor  of 
the  British  constitution,  of  which  he  is  so  worthy  a  repre- 
sentative. Neither  can  we  offer  him,  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Club,  the  charms  of  the  feminine  presence  with  which,  if  he 
was  not  misreportcd  on  a  recent  occasion,  he  has  been  hon- 
ored and  delighted  during  his  stay  among  us.  It  was  only 
yesterday  that  I  read  In  the  newspapers  of  a  high  tribute 
paid  by  him  to  the  wit  and  beauty  of  the  women  of  Amer- 
ica. Had  we  known  in  season  that  his  lordship  cherished 
that  gentle  enthusiasm,  had  we  supposed  it  possible  that  a 


TRIBUTE    TO    LORD    HOUGHTON  ,    1 53 

peer  of  England  would  be  open  to  those  tender  influences, 
we  mii^ht  have  put  in  practice  the  theory  of  natural  selec- 
tion, as  the  occasion  would  have  justified,  and  have  sur- 
rounded him  on  this  last  night  of  his  stay  in  America  with 
such  a  glittering  array  of  loveliness  as  would  have  set  his 
"  poet's  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling,"  and  perhaps  some 
future  edition  of  "  I'alm  Leaves"  or  of  "  Poems  of  Many 
Years"  would  have  contained  some  stanzas  to  the  women 
of  the  West  by  Lord  Houghton  that,  in  delicacy  and  sweet- 
ness, would  have  matched  the  lyric  tributes  which  Monck- 
ton  Milncs  was  wont  to  pay  to  the  far-famed  graces  of  the 
Orient. 

No,  we  have  sought  this  occasion  not  so  much  for  his 
own  pleasure  as  for  ours,  having  little  to  offer  him  but  the 
honest  expression  of  that  high  consideration  and  regard 
which  has  long  been  felt  for  his  lordship  in  the  United 
States.  We  desired  an  opportunity  to  look  upon  one  whose 
name  has  been  associated  for  a  whole  generation  with  those 
things  which  tend  to  elevate  and  improve  the  condition  of 
mankind.  Many  of  us,  from  childhood,  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  hear  of  him  as  one  of  the  men  of  letters  of  Eng- 
land, who,  by  their  devotion  to  good  learning  and  polite 
literature,  have  been  missionaries  of  knowledge  and  pleas- 
ure to  all  who  speak  and  read  the  English  tongue.  Some 
of  us  have  read  his  books — 

"  And  books,  we  know. 
Are  a  substantial  world,  both  pure  and  good  : 
Round  these,  with  tendrils  strong  as  flesh  and  blood, 
Our  pastime  and  our  happiness  will  grow." 

We  have  heard  by  tradition  and  report  of  his  generous 
sympathy  for  humanity  in  all  its  suffering  forms,  that  the 
cause  of  oppressed  nationalities  has  found  in  him  a  constant 
advocate  and  friend — whether  Poland,  the  bleeding  victim 
of  her  rapacious  neighbors — or  Italy,  suffering  the  accumu- 
lated miseries  of  centuries — or  Greece,  the  classic  heir  of  an- 
cient woes.  We  have  been  told  also  that  the  promptings 
of  a  generous  and  manly  heart  have  led  him  to  support  at 
home  all  measures  for  the  reform  and  amelioration  of  the 
criminal  classes,  and  to  alleviate  the  distresses  of  the  poor; 
that  he  wears  the  well-earned  title  of  a  friend  of  humanity. 


154  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

We  have  not  forgotten  his  stout  assertions  of  the  right  of 
freedom  in  reHgion,  and  remember  his  statement — made 
when  it  was  not  yet  altogether  popular — that  "  religious 
equality  is  the  natural  birthright  of  every  Briton," 

But,  after  all,  the  chief  and  immediate  title  of  Lord 
Houghton  to  our  special  regard  and  gratitude  is  in  the  manly 
stand  he  took  with  certain  other  liberal  statesmen  of  England 
on  the  occasion  of  our  late  civil  war,  by  which  they  proved 
themselves  the  steadfast  and  effective  friends  alike  of  their 
own  country  and  of  ours.  Not  more  from  political  con- 
sideration, I  think,  than  from  a  natural,  instinctive,  Anglo- 
Saxon  love  of  fair  play — because  they  could  not  help  it — 
they  insisted — and  none  more  emphatically  than  our  guest 
of  this  evening — that  England  should  observe  a  real  and 
honest  friendship  to  America.  To  borrow  words  of  his 
own  : — 

'*  Great  thoughts,  great  feelings  came  to  them. 
Like  instincts,  unawares." 

He  will  pardon  me,  I  know,  forrefreshing  your  recollection 
from  the  Debates,  with  regard  to  one  or  two  things  which 
he  said  in  his  place  in  the  House  of  Commons.  When  the 
seizure  of  the  "  Alexandra  "  was  under  discussion,  in  April, 
1863,  which  you  will  remember  as  one  of  the  very  darkest 
periods  we  ever  passed  through — it  was  in  that  month  that 
President  Lincoln,  in  accordance  with  a  resolution  of  the  Sen- 
ate, set  apart  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  for  the  whole  people 
to  humble  themselves  before  Almighty  God  for  the  deadly 
scourgings  of  the  war — it  was  then  that,  after  hearing  some 
violent  words  spoken  in  Parliament,  tending  to  measures 
which,  if  adopted,  would  force  us  in  our  crippled  condition 
into  the  desperate  e.xtremity  of  war  with  England,  he  said, 
after  regretting  the  violent  language  to  which  he  had 
listened : — 

"  Sir  : — I  trust  that  peace  will  continue,  for  many  reasons,  but  above 
all  for  this.  For  us  to  talk  of  war — for  England  armed  to  the  teeth — 
England  with  all  her  wealth  and  power  to  talk  of  war  against  a  nation  in 
the  very  agonies  of  her  destinies,  and  torn  to  the  vitals  by  a  great,  civil 
commotion,  is  so  utterly  ungenerous,  so  repugnant  to  every  manly  feel- 
ing, that  I  cannot  conceive  it  possible.  Honorable  gentlemen  opposite 
talk  of  acting  in  a  gallant   spirit.     Is  it  to  act  in  a  gallant  spirit  for  a 


TRIBUTE   TO    LORD    HOUGHTON  1 55 

strong  man  to  figlit  a  man  with  his  arms  tied,  with  his  eyes  blinded  ?  And 
that  is  what  you  pro])ose  to  do — you,  with  the  wealth  and  power  of 
England — when  you  seek  to  promote  war  with  the  United  States." 

Happily  for  us,  such  friendly  and  generous  words  and 
counsels  prevailed,  and  we  escaped  that  untold  calamity. 
And  again,  a  little  earlier,  wlien  our  blockade,  whose  main- 
tenance was  so  absolutely  essential  to  the  successful  prosecu- 
tion of  the  war,  pressed  so  hard  on  their  own  domestic 
prosperity  as  to  provoke  appeals  to  the  British  government 
to  disregard  and  ignore  it,  he  scouted  the  idea,  and  after 
arguing  that  the  blockade  was  as  effective  as,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  it  was  possible  to  make  it,  he  said  : — 

"  I  have  always  regarded  a  disruption  of  the  American  Union  as  a  great 
calamity  for  the  world,  believing  with  De  Tocqueville  that  it  would  do 
more  to  destroy  political  liberty  and  arrest  the  progress  of  mankind  than 
any  other  event  that  can  possibl}'  be  imagined.  .  .  .  The  Americans  are  our 
fellow-countrymen.  I  shall  always  call  them  so.  I  see  in  them  our  own 
character  reproduced  with  all  its  merits  and  all  its  defects.  They  are  as 
vigorous,  as  industrious,  as  powerful,  as  honest  and  truthful  as  ourselves. 
And  I  can  never  for  a  moment  disassociate  the  fortunes  of  Great  Britain 
from  the  fortunes  of  the  United  States  of  America." 

No  wonder  that  Lord  Houghton  finds  many  friends  in 
America.  I  need  not  assure  him  that  we  appreciate  and  re- 
ciprocate these  generous  sentiments  uttered  in  those  darkest 
hours  of  our  sorest  need,  and  that  we  join  our  prayers  to  his 
for  the  perpetual  peace  and  friendship  between  these  two 
nations  that  are  of  but  one  interest,  one  tongue,  and  one 
blood. 

In  the  name,  my  lord,  of  this  Club,  which  may  modestly 
claim  to  represent  a  portion  of  the  intelligence  and  the 
public  spirit  of  New  York,  supported  as  it  is  to-night  by  the 
presence  of  her  chief  magistrate  and  of  many  other  citizens 
who,  without  regard  to  politics  or  creeds,  have  assembled 
with  it  in  your  honor,  I  bid  you  a  most  cordial  and  hearty 
welcome. 


156  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 


THE  BENCH  AND  THE  BAR 

[Speech  of  Mr.  Clioate  at  the  iiith  Annual  Banquet  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York,  May  13,  1879.  I"  introducmg 
him,  the  President,  Samuel  Babcock,  said  :  "The  next  toast  is  '  The 
Bench  and  the  Bar — Blessed  are  the  peacemakers.'  [Laughter  and  ap- 
plause.] I  must  say  in  reference  to  this  toast,  that  it  is  a  much  greater 
piece  of  sarcasm  than  the  one  on  '  Sister  Cities.'  I  never  heard  lawyers 
called  by  that  title  before,  but  I  will  ask  our  distinguished  fellow-citizen, 
from  whom  we  are  alwa^-s  glad  to  hear  on  these  oecasions,  Joseph  H. 
Choate,  Esquire,  to  respond."] 

Mr.  President: — I  rise  with  unprecedented  embarras.s- 
ment  in  this  presence  and  at  this  hour  to  respond  to  this  sen- 
timent, so  flattering  to  the  feelings  of  all  members  of  the 
Bench  and  Bar  [applause],  to  say  nothing  of  that  shrinking 
modesty  inherent  in  the  breast  of  every  lawyer  and  which 
the  longer  he  practises  seems  to  grow  stronger  and  stronger. 
[Laughter.]  I  have  a  specific  trouble  which  overwhelms 
me  at  this  moment,  and  that  is  that  all  the  preparation 
I  had  made  for  this  occasion  is  a  complete  miscarriage. 
[Laughter.] 

I  received  this  sentiment  yesterday  with  an  intimation 
that  I  was  expected  to  respond  to  it.  I  had  prepared  a  se- 
rious and  sober  essay  on  the  relations  of  commerce  to  the 
law — the  one  great  relation  of  client  and  counsel  [laughter], 
but  I  have  laid  all  that  aside ;  I  do  not  intend  to  have  a 
single  sober  word  to-night.  [Laughter.]  I  do  not  know 
that  I  could.  [Renewed  laughter.]  There  is  a  reason,  how- 
ever, ^f  hy  nothing  more  of  a  sober  sort  should  be  uttered  at 
this  table  ;  there  is  a  danger  that  it  would  increase  by  how- 
ever small  a  measure  the  specific  gravity  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  of  New  York.  Certainly  nothing  could  be  a 
greater  calamity  than  that.  [Laughter.]  At  an  hour  like 
this,  sir,  merchants  like  witnesses  are  to  be  weighed  as  well 
as  counted  ;  and  when  I  compare  your  appearance  at  this 
moment  with  what  it  was  when  you  entered  this  room,  when 
I  look  around  upon  these  swollen  girths  and  these  expanded 
countenances,  when  I  see  that  each  individual  of  the  Cham- 
ber  has   increased  his  avoirdupois  at  least  ten  pounds  since 


THE    BENCH    AND   THE    BAR  1 57 

he  took  his  scat  at  this  table,  why  the  total  weight  of  the 
aggregate  body  must  be  startling,  indeed  [laughter],  and 
as  I  suppose  you  believe  in  a  resurrection  from  this  long 
session,  as  you  undoubtedly  hope  to  rise  again  from  these 
chairs,  to  which  you  have  been  glued  so  long,  I  should  be 
the  last  person  to  add  a  feather's  weight  to  what  has  been 
so  heavily  heaped  upon  you.     [Applause.] 

I  have  forgotten,  Mr.  President,  whether  it  was  Josh 
Billings  or  Henry  F.  Spaulding,  who  gave  utterance  to  the 
profound  sentiment  that  there  is  no  substitute  for  wisdom, 
and  that  the  next  best  thing  to  wisdom  is  silence.  [Laughter 
and  applause.]  And  so,  handing  to  the  reporters  the  essay 
which  I  had  prepared  for  your  instruction,  it  would  be  my 
duty  to  sit  down  in  peace.  [Laughter.]  But  I  cannot  take 
my  seat  without  repudiating  some  of  the  gloomy  views 
which  have  fallen  from  the  gentlemen  who  preceded  me. 
My  worthy  pastor,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Bellows,  has  said,  if  I  re- 
member rightly  his  language,  that  there  is  a  great  distrust 
in  the  American  heart  of  the  permanence  of  our  American 
institutions.     [Laughter.] 

[Rev.  Dr.  Bellows:  "I  did  not  say  anything  of  the  kind." 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  1 

[Mr.  Choate :  "  Well,  I  leave  it  to  your  recollection, 
gentlemen  of  the  jury,  what  he  did  say."     [Laughter.]  "1 

I  am  perfectly  willing  that  the  doctor  should  speak  for 
his  own  institution,  but  not  for  mine.  I  do  not  believe  that 
a  body  of  merchants  of  New  York  with  their  stomachs  full 
have  any  growing  scepticism  or  distrust  of  the  permanence 
of  the  institution  which  I  represent.  [Laughter.]  The 
poor,  gentlemen,  you  have  Avith  you  always,  and  so  the 
lawyer  will  always  be  your  sure  and  steadfast  companion. 
[Applause.] 

Mr.  Blaine,  freighted  with  wisdom  from  the  floor  of  the 
Senate  house  and  from  long  study  of  American  institutions, 
has  deplored  the  low  condition  of'the  carrying  trade.  Now, 
for  our  part,  as  representing  one  of  the  institutions  which 
does  its  full  share  of  the  carrying  trade,  I  repudiate  the  idea. 
We  undoubtedly  are  still  prepared  to  carry  all  that  can  be 
heaped  upon  us.  [Laughter.]  Lord  Bacon,  who  was  thought 
the  greatest  lawyer  of  his  age,  has  said  that  every  man  owes 


158  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

a  duty  to  his  profession  ;  but  I  think  that  can  be  amended 
by  saying,  in  reference  to  the  law,  that  every  man  in  the 
community  owes  a  duty  to  our  profession  [laughter]  ;  and 
somewhere,  at  some  time,  somewhere  between  the  cradle 
and  the  grave,  he  must  acknowledge  the  liability  and  pay 
the  debt.  [Applause.]  Why,  gentlemen,  you  cannot  live 
without  the  lawyers,  and  certainly  you  cannot  die  without 
them.  [Laughter.]  It  was  one  of  the  brightest  members 
of  the  profession,  you  remember,  who  had  taken  his  passage 
for  Europe  to  spend  his  summer  vacation  on  the  other  side, 
and  failed  to  go  ;  and  when  called  upon  for  an  explanation, 
he  said, — why,  yes  ;  he  had  taken  his  passage,  and  had  in- 
tended to  go,  but  one  of  his  rich  clients  had  died,  and  he 
was  afraid  if  he  had  gone  across  the  Atlantic,  the  heirs 
would  have  got  all  the  property.     [Applause  and  laughter.] 

Our  celebrated  Minister  to  Berlin  [Andrew  D.  White] 
also  has  spoken  a  good  many  earnest  words  in  behalf  of  the 
institutions  he  represents.  I  did  not  observe  any  imme- 
diate response  to  the  calls  he  made,  but  I  could  not  help 
thinking  as  he  was  speaking,  how  such  an  appeal  might  be 
made,  and  probably  would  be  made  with  effect,  in  behalf 
of  the  institution  I  represent,  upon  many  of  you  in  the 
course  of  the  immediate  future.  When  I  look  around  me 
on  this  solid  body  of  merchants,  all  this  heaped-up  and  idle 
capital,  all  these  great  representatives  of  immense  railroad, 
steamship  and  every  other  interest  under  the  face  of  the 
sun,  I  believe  that  the  fortunes  of  the  Bar  are  yet  at  their 
very  beginning.  [Applause.]  Gentlemen,  the  future  is  all 
before  us.  We  have  no  sympathy  with  Communism,  but 
like  Communists  we  have  everything  to  gain  and  nothing 
to  lose.     [Laughter.] 

But  my  attention  must  be  called  for  a  moment,  before  I 
sit  down,  to  the  rather  remarkable  phraseology  of  the  toast. 
I  have  heard  lawyers  abused  on  many  occasions.  In  the 
midst  of  strife  we  certainly  are  most  active  participants. 
But  you  apply  the  phrase  to  us  :  "  Blessed  are  the  peace- 
makers !  "  Well,  now,  I  believe  that  is  true.  I  believe  that 
if  you  will  devote  yourself  assiduously  enough,  and  long 
enough,  to  our  profession,  it  will  result  in  perfect  peace. 
[Laughter.]  But  you  never  knew — did  you  ? — a  lawsuit,  if 
it  was  prosecuted  vigorously  enough  and  lasted  long  enough, 


THE   sorcerer's   RESPONSE  159 

where  at  the  end  there  was  anything  left  for  the  parties  to 
quarrel  over.     [Continued  laughter.] 

Mr.  President,  I  shall  not  weary  your  patience  longer. 
This  long  programme  of  toasts  is  not  yet  exhausted.  The 
witching  hour  of  midnight  is  not  far  off,  and  yet  there  are 
many  statesmen,  there  are  many  lawyers,  there  are  many 
merchants  who  arc  yet  to  be  heard  from,  and  so  it  is  time  I 
should  take  my  seat,  exhorting  you  to  do  justice  always  to 
the  profession  of  the  law.     [Loud  applause.] 


THE  SORCERER'S  RESPONSE 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate  at  the  first  banquet  of  the  New  England 
Society  in  the  City  of  Brooklyn,  December  21,  1880.  Benjamin  D.  Silli- 
man,  President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair.  The  toast  to  which 
Mr.  Choate  responded  was:  "The  New  England  Society  in  the  City 
of  New  York — a  worthy  representative  of  New  England  Principles." 
The  chairman  said  :  "  Salem  had  its  witches.  They  were  generally  of 
the  gentle  sex.  But  one  of  them  in  the  shape  of  mortal  man  emigrated, 
some  twenty-five  years  ago,  from  Salem  to  New  York,  where  he  has  ever 
since  (as  his  famed  kinsman  and  namesake  before  him  did  in  Boston) 
bewitched  courts  and  juries.  At  the  risk  of  being  bewitched,  we  will 
invoke  the  sorcerer  to  respond  to  this  toast  and  I  therefore  call  on  Mr. 
Choate."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  : — As  I  intend  to  walk 
home  over  the  bridge  to-night  [laughter]  my  remarks  will 
be  as  brief  as  they  must  be  sober  ;  and  a  word  of  that  great 
structure  before  I  begin.  If  Mr.  Murphy  will  excuse  me 
for  saying  so,  it  is  in  every  possible  sense  of  the  word  to  the 
people  of  both  cities  a  "  Bridge  of  Sighs  !  "     [Laughter.] 

It  is  well  for  you  that  you  made  this  experiment  before 
it  was  finally  completed  ;  because,  if,  as  they  tell  us,  it  is  to 
make  of  us  one  city  and  one  people,  there  should  be  written 
at  its  terminus,  when  it  .shall  be  completed,  a  motto  bor- 
rowed from  its  namesake  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic : 
"  who  enters  here  must  leave  all  hope  of  an  independent 
celebration  in  Brooklyn  behind."  [Laughter.]  Gentlemen, 
I  have  been  sent  here  to-night  by  your  parent  society,  the 
New  England  Society  of  New  York  [laughter],  to  welcome 
in  its  behalf  this  infant  prodigy,  which  has  grown  to  full 


l6o  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

manhood,  or  womanhood,  in  the  first  night  of  its  existence. 
[Applause.]  Why,  you  have  accompHshed  as  much  in  one 
twenty-four  hours,  as  we  in  the  protracted  struggle  of  the 
whole  seventy-five  years  of  our  career.  And  this,  too,  in 
Brooklyn,  the  dormitory  of  New  York  [laughter] — well,  it 
shows  how  much  good  there  is  in  sleep.  [Laughter.]  It 
shows  how  true  those  eulogies  are  which  all  the  poets  have 
exhausted  upon  sleep : 

"  Sleep  that  knits  up  the  ravel'd  sleeve  of  care  ; 
The  death  of  each  day's  life,  sore  labor's  bath  ; 
Balm  of  hurt  minds,  great  nature's  second  course. 
Chief  nourisher  at  life's  feast." 

And  yet,  gentlemen,  it  gives  a  death  blow  to  some  of  that 
esteem  and  consideration  in  which  we,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  river,  have  been  in  the  habit  of  holding  our  brethren  and 
neighbors  of  Brooklyn.  Seeing  you,  as  we  have  year  after 
year,  for  the  last  seventy-five  years  [laughter],  coming  as 
modest  partakers  of  the  viands  that  we  set  before  you  on 
Manhattan  Island,  we  had  come  to  look  upon  you  as  modest, 
unassuming,  self-denying  descendants  of  the  Pilgrims,  and 
worthy  followers  in  their  footsteps.  But  this  declaration  of 
independence  of  yours  puts  an  entirely  new  phase  upon  the 
situation;  where  is  your  long-asserted  modesty?  [Laugh- 
ter.] Why,  the  most  sublime  instance  that  I  have  ever 
known  or  heard  of,  of  a  modest,  self-denying  descendant  of 
the  sons  of  the  Pilgrims  was  exhibited  by  a  Brooklynite. 
He  has  since  become  a  great  Congregational  clergyman.  I 
name  no  names,  for  names  are  always  invidious.  It  v/as  in 
his  younger  days,  after  he  had  completed  his  course  of  in- 
struction, and  was  ready  to  take  upon  himself  the  sacred 
orders  ;  when  he  presented  himself  before  the  dignified  con- 
ference that  was  to  pass  upon  his  qualifications,  the  Moder- 
ator put  to  him  that  great  orthodox  question,  the  test  of 
which  every  candidate  was  expected  to  stand.  "  Sir,"  said 
the  Moderator,  "are  you  willing  to  be  saved  by  consenting 
to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  God?"  [Laughter.]  And 
the  sublime  answer  that  he  gave  justified  the  great  reputa- 
tion that  he  afterward  gained.  "  No,"  said  he,  "  Mr.  Mod- 
erator, but  I  am  perfectly  willing  that  you  should  be  !  " 
[Great  applause.]     What  perfect  self-abnegation  was  there 


THE    SORCERERS    RESPONSE  l6l 

displayed  !  and    how   sadly    have   you    all  fallen  froni  that 
exalted  standard  ! 

Another  thing  that  I  noticed,  Mr.  President,  is  that  you 
have  selected  the  twenty-first  of  December  for  your  celebra- 
tion, instead  of  the  twenty-second.  General  Sherman  has 
been  charitable  enough  to  suppose  that  it  is  because  there 
is  a  doubt  on  which  of  these  days  the  Pilgrims  landed.  We 
believe,  on  the  contrary,  that  you  have  selected  the  twenty- 
first  because  we  have  selected  the  twenty-second  [laughter], 
or  possibly  at  this  late  hour  of  the  evening,  we  may  be 
excused,  not  for  considering  it  doubtful  whether  they 
landed  on  the  twenty-first  or  the  twenty-second,  but 
for  firmly  believing  that  they  landed  on  both  days. 
[Laughter.]  Gentlemen,  it  is  a  very  serious  question,  this 
complication  and  re-duplication  of  New  England  festivals. 
The  wheels  of  the  Federal  Government,  as  you  perceive, 
must  necessarily  be  stopped,  until  both  these  days  are  cel- 
ebrated, and  both  these  dinners  eaten  and  digested.  For 
one,  I  believe  that  the  great  welfare  of  this  people  would  be 
promoted  if  the  event  could  be  celebrated  on  all  the  365  days 
of  the  year.  [Applause,]  If  not  only  the  President  and 
Secretary  of  State,  and  tlie  General  of  the  Armies,  but  all 
the  holders  of  office  from  them  down  to  the  lowest  tide- 
water, could  be  fed  every  day  upon  your  simple  fare  of  pork 
and  beans — and  codfish  and  Indian  pudding — why  it  would 
solve  immediately  that  great  problem  of  civil  service  reform 
which  has  vexed  so  much  the  patience  of  this  Administra- 
tion, and  would  give  a  free  course,  over  which  their  succes- 
sors could  go  on  their  way  rejoicing  and  triumphant.  [Ap- 
plause.] But  it  is  a  great  thing  to  have  two  dinners,  if  we 
cannot  have  three  hundred  and  sixty-five.  It  is  a  splendid 
thing  to  bring  General  Sherman  here,  who  with  his  little 
army  has  now  only  to  fight  Indians,  that  he  may  learn  at 
the  shrine  of  Miles  Standish,  who  also  had  nobody  but  In- 
dians to  fight — and  who  put  them  all  to  rout  with  his  little 
trained  band  of  thirteen  armed  Pilgrims.  [Laughter.]  You 
may  depend  upon  it  that  on  Thursday  morning,  at  any  rate, 
the  Secretary  of  State  [\V.  M.  Evarts]  will  return  to  his 
great  duties  at  Washington,  after  partaking  of  both  of  these 
festivals,  a  fatter  and  a  better  man.     [Tumultuous  laugh- 


l62  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

Mr.  President,  one  of  the  most  interesting  reflections  that 
occur  to  any  thoughtful  mind,  on  gazing  around  on  such  a 
company  as  this,  is  to  compare  these  sleek,  well-fed,  self- 
satisfied  and  contented  men  with  what  they  were  when  they 
started  out  from  New  England.  [Laughter.]  Archimedes, 
brandishing  his  lever,  said  that  if  you  could  give  him  a  point 
to  stand  on,  he  would  move  the  world,  and  so,  the  genuine 
emigrant  from  New  England  says  :  "  Give  me  but  a  point  for 
my  feet  [laughter],  and  plenty  of  elbow-room,  and  I  will 
make  all  the  world  about  me,  mine."  It  is  told  traditionally 
— I  believe  it  is  true — of  ®ne  of  the  first  pioneers  from  New 
England  to  this  good  old  City  of  Brooklyn,  that,  when  he 
presented  his  letters  at  the  counting-room  at  which  he  sought 
admission,  the  lordly  proprietor  of  the  establishment  asked 
him  :  "  Why,  what  in  the  world  are  all  you  Yankee  boys 
coming  here  for?"  "  Sir,"  said  he,  with  that  modest  assur- 
ance that  marked  the  whole  tribe  [laughter],  "  we  are  coming 
to  attend  to  }'our  business,  to  marry  your  daughters,  and 
take  charge  of  your  estates."  [Laughter.]  I  believe,  sir, 
that  the  descendants  of  that  hero  are  still  here,  actual  guests 
at  this  table  to-night,  and  still  have  that  particular  estate  in 
charge.  [Laughter.]  And  if  not  they,  why  all  these  gen- 
tlemen represent  the  same  practical  application  of  that 
experience,  and  of  that  rule. 

Now,  gentlemen,  in  behalf  of  the  parent  society  that  I 
represent,  I  bid  you  Godspeed.  You  cannot  do  better  than 
to  continue  as  you  have  begun,  to  eat  and  drink  }'our  way 
back  to  Plymouth  Rock.  It  is  the  true  way  to  celebrate 
the  Pilgrim  leathers.  Do  not  have  any  long  orations. 
They  nearly  killed  the  parent  society.     [Laughter.] 

And  let  me  tell  you  a  very  interesting  reminiscence;  for 
one  who  has  eaten  twenty-five  New  England  diimers  in  suc- 
cession at  the  New  York  table,  may  indulge  in  one  reminis- 
cence :  It  Avas  the  first  celebration  that  I  ever  attended, 
twenty-five  years  ago,  in  the  City  of  New  York,  and  we  had 
an  oration,  and  the  very  narration  of  what  then  occurred 
shows  what  wondrous  progress  the  principles  of  the  Pilgrims 
have  made  in  this  last  quarter  of  a  century.  It  was  in  the 
old  church  of  the  Puritans,  on  Union  Square,  that  has  given 
place  to  that  palace  of  art,  now  known  by  the  name  of  Tif- 
fany's.    There  came  one  of  the  great  and  shining  lights  of 


THE    sorcerer's    RESPONSE  1 63 

Boston's  intellect,  giving  us  the  best  exposition  that  he  could 
give  of  what  my  friend,  Mr.  Hale,  describes  as  Boston  in- 
tensity, overshadowed  by  Boston  conservatism.  He  ap- 
pealed to  that  congregation,  with  all  the  eloquence  that  he 
could  command,  to  stand  by  the  Union  as  it  was,  upon  the 
physical  fact  of  slavery  as  it  then  existed.  He  appealed  to 
them — to  the  white  blood  that  ran  in  their  veins — to  stand 
by  their  white  brethren,  whenever  there  should  come  the 
conflict  of  races  in  this  land.  And  I  remember  the  icy  chill 
that  ran  through  the  assembled  company  of  New  England's 
sons  and  daughters  when  he  took  his  seat. 

But,  fortunately  there  rose  up  after  him  that  grand  old 
chip  of  Plymouth  Rock,  John  Pierpont,  who  had  himself 
suffered  persecution  in  the  very  city  of  Boston,  of  which 
we  are  so  proud,  and  he  delivered  the  poem  of  the  occasion, 
and  as  those  glowing  stanzas  fell  from  his  burning  and  in- 
dignant lips,  he  fired  the  hearts  of  the  congregation  with 
his  prophetic  utterances.  I  remember  the  stanza  with 
which  he  closed  ;  which  no  one  who  heard  him,  it  seemed 
to  me,  could  ever  forget,  when  he  invoked  the  aid  of  the 
Almighty  to  inspire  the  hearts  of  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
the  Pilgrims  to  be  true  to  their  fathers,  and  never  to  turn 
their  backs  on  Liberty — never  to  desert  the  cause  of  the 
slave  : — 

"  O  Thou  Holy  One,  and  just, 
Thou  who  wast  the  Pilgrims'  trust, 
Thou  who  watchest  o'er  their  dust, 

By  the  moaning  sea, 
By  their  conflicts,  toils  and  cares, 
By  their  perils,  and  their  prayers. 
By  their  ashes,  make  their  heirs, 
True  to  them  and  Thee  !  " 

The  cold  fatalism  of  the  orator  was  lost  and  forgotten  ; 
but  that  burning  prophecy  of  the  poet  lives  to-day.  We 
see  its  fruits  in  a  land  redeemed  from  slavery,  in  a  nation 
starting  on  an  imperishable  career  of  glory,  where  equal  lib- 
erty, and  equal  law,  are  secure  to  all  men,  of  every  color, 
and  of  every  race.     [Long-continued  applause.] 


l64  JOSEPH    HODGES    CHOATE 


THE  PILGRIM  MOTHERS 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate  at  the  seventy-fifth  anniversary  banquet 
of  the  New  England  Society,  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22, 
1S80.  James  C.  Carter,  President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair,  and 
said  by  way  of  introduction  :  "I  have  here  a  toast  to  '  The  Wives  and 
Daughters  of  New  England  '  coupled  with  the  name  of  a  gentleman  very 
familiar  to  5'ou  ;  but  I  hesitate  a  little  about  having  him  speak  for  them, 
without  first  consulting  the  husbands  and  fathers.  So  I  will  give  j-ou 
'  The  Pilgrim  Mothers,'  and  call  upon  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Choate  to  respond."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  : — 

"  As  unto  the  bow  the  cord  is. 
So  unto  the  man  is  woman  : 
Though  she  bends  him,  she  obej^s  him  ; 
Though  she  draws  him,  5-et  she  follows  ; 
Useless  each  without  the  other." 

I  have  no  doubt,  Mr.  President,  that  it  is  in  obedience  to 
this  most  truthful  sentiment  of  our  New  England  poet  that, 
to-night,  your  committee  of  arrangements  have  added  the 
cord  to  the  bow,  so  that,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
the  Society,  there  might  be  a  complete  celebration  of  the 
landing  of  the  Pilgrims.  [Cheers.]  I  am  not  surprised, 
Mr.  President,  that  you  deem  this  subject  so  delicate  a  one 
for  your  rude  hands  to  touch,  or  for  your  inexperienced  lips 
to  salute  [laughter]  ;  that  you  have  left  it  to  one  who 
claims  to  be  by  nature  and  experience  more  gifted  with 
knowledge  of  the  subject.  [Laughter.]  And  yet  even  I 
tremble  at  the  task  which  you  have  assigned  me.  To  speak 
for  so  many  women  at  once  is  a  rare  and  a  difficult  oppor- 
tunity. It  is  given  to  most  of  the  sons  of  the  Pilgrims  once 
only  in  a  lifetime  to  speak  for  one  woman.  [Laughter.] 
Sometimes,  in  rare  cases  of  felicity,  they  are  allowed  to  do 
so  a  second  time  ;  and  if,  by  the  gift  of  Divine  Providence, 
it  reaches  to  a  third  and  a  fourth,  it  is  what  very  few  of  us 
can  hope  for.  [Laughter  and  cheers.]  And  yet,  sir,  they 
will  point  out  to  you  in  one  village  of  Connecticut  a  grave- 
yard wherein  repose  the  bones  of  a  true  son  of  the  Pilgrims, 
surrounded  by  five  wives  who  in  succession   had  shared  his 


THE    PILGRIM    MOTHERS  165 

lot,  and  he  rests  in  the  centre,  in  serene  felicity,  with  the 
epitaph  upon  the  marble  headstone  that  entombs  him  in- 
scribed, "Our  Husband."  [Laughter.]  Now,  whose  hus- 
band, sir,  shall  he  be  in  the  world  to  come,  if  it  shall  then 
turn  out  that  Joseph  Smith  was  not  a  true  prophet? 
[Laughter.] 

I  really  don't  know,  at  this  late  hour,  Mr.  Chairman,  how 
you  expect  me  to  treat  this  difficult  and  tender  subject.  I 
suppose,  to  begin  with,  I  may  take  it  up  historically.  There 
is  no  part  of  the  sacred  writings  that  has  so  much  impressed 
me  as  the  history  of  the  first  creation  of  woman.  I  believe 
that  no  invasion  of  science  has  shaken  the  truth  of  that  re- 
markable record — how  Adam  slept,  and  his  best  rib  was 
taken  from  his  side  and  transformed  into  the  first  woman. 
Thus,  sir,  she  became  the  "  side-bone  "  of  man  ! — the  sweet- 
est morsel  in  his  whole  organism  !  [Laughter.]  Why,  sir, 
there  is  nothing  within  the  pages  of  sacred  writ  that  is 
dearer  to  me  than  that  story.  I  believe  in  it  as  firmly  as  I 
do  in  that  of  Daniel  in  the  den  of  lions,  or  Jonah  in  the  whale's 
belly,  or  any  other  of  those  remarkable  tales.  [Laughter.] 
There  is  something  in  our  very  organism,  sir,  that  confirms 
its  truth  ;  for  if  any  one  of  you  will  lay  his  hand  upon  his 
heart,  where  the  space  between  the  ribs  is  widest,  you  feel 
there  a  vacuum,  which  nature  abhors,  and  which  noth- 
ing can  ever  replace  until  the  dear  creature  that  was  taken 
from  that  spot  is  restored  to  it.  [Cheers  and  laughter.] 
Now,  Mr.  Chairman,  you,  as  a  bachelor,  may  doubt  the 
truth  of  that ;  but  I  ask  you,  just  once,  here  and  now, 
to  try  it.  [Laughter.]  Follow  my  example,  sir,  and  place 
your  hand  just  there,  and  see  if  you  do  not  feel  a  sense  of 
"  gone-ness  "  which  nothing  that  you  have  ever  yet  experi- 
enced has  been  able  to  satisfy.     [Cheers  and  laughter.] 

I  might  next  take  up  the  subject  etymologically,  and  try 
and  explain  how  woman  ever  acquired  that  remarkable 
name.  But  that  has  been  done  before  me  by  a  poet  with 
whose  stanzas  you  are  not  familiar,  but  whom  you  will  rec- 
ognize as  deeply  versed  in  this  subject,  for  he  says:-  — 

"  When  Eve  brought  woe  to  all  mankind, 
Old  Adam  called  her  woe-man, 
But  when  she  woo'd  with  love  so  kind, 
He  then  pronounced  her  woman. 


166  JOSEPH   HODGES  CMOATE 

*'  But  now,  u'ith  folly  and  with  pride, 
Their  husband's  pockets  trimming. 
The  ladies  are  so  full  of  whims 
That  people  call  them  w(h)imeu." 

[Laughter  and  cheers.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  beheve  you  said  I  should  say  something 
about  the  Pilgrim  mothers.  Well,  sir,  it  is  rather  late  in 
the  evening  to  venture  upon  that  historic  subject.  But,  for 
one,  I  pity  them.  The  occupants  of  the  galleries  will  bear 
me  witness  that  even  these  modern  Pilgrims — these  Pilgrims 
with  all  the  modern  improvements — how  hard  it  is  to  put 
up  with  their  weaknesses,  their  follies,  their  tyrannies,  their 
oppressions,  their  desire  of  dominion  and  rule.  [Laughter.] 
But  when  you  go  back  to  the  stern  horrors  of  the  Pilgrim 
rule,  when  you  contemplate  the  rugged  character  of  the 
Pilgrim  fathers,  why,  you  give  credence  to  what  a  witty 
woman  of  Boston  said — she  had  heard  enough  of  the  glories 
and  virtues  and  sufferings  of  the  Pilgrim  fathers  ;  for  her 
part,  she  had  a  world  of  sympathy  for  the  Pilgrim  mothers, 
because  they  not  only  endured  all  that  the  Pilgrim  fathers 
had  done,  but  they  also  had  to  endure  the  Pilgrim  fathers 
to  boot.  [Laughter.]  Well,  sir,  they  were  afraid  of  wo- 
man. They  thought  she  was  almost  too  refined  a  luxury 
for  them  to  indulge  in.  Miles  Standish  spoke  for  them  all, 
and  I  am  sure  that  General  Sherman,  who  so  much  re- 
sembles Miles  Standish,  not  only  in  his  military  renown  but 
in  his  rugged  exterior  and  in  his  warm  and  tender  heart, 
will  echo  his  words  when  he  says  :  — 

"  I  can  march  up  to  a  fortress,  and  summon  the  place  to  surrender, 
But  march  up  to  a  woman  with  such  a  proposal,  I  dare  not. 
I  am  not  afraid  of  bullets,  nor  shot  from  the  mouth  of  a  cannon. 
But  of  a  thundering  '  No  !  '  point-blank  from  the  mouth    of  a  woman, 
That  I  confess  I'm  afraid  of,  nor  am  I  ashamed  to  confess  it." 

Mr.  President,  did  you  ever  see  a  more  self-satisfied  or 
contented  set  of  men  than  these  that  are  gathered  at  these 
tables  this  evening?  I  never  come  to  the  Pilgrim  dinner 
and  see  these  men,  who  have  achieved  in  the  various  depart- 
ments of  life  such  definite  and  satisfactory  success,  but  that 
I  look  back  twenty  or  thirty  or  forty  years,  and  see  the 
lantern-jawed   boy  who  started   out   from  the  banks  of  the 


AMERICAS   GOLDEN    AGE  167 

Connecticut,  or  some  more  remote  river  of  New  England, 
with  five  dollars  in  his  pocket  and  his  father's  blessing  on 
his  head  and  his  mother's  Bible  in  his  carpet-bag,  to  seek 
those  fortunes  which  now  they  have  so  gloriously  made. 
And  there  is  one  woman  whom  each  of  these,  through  all 
liis  progress  and  to  the  last  expiring  hour  of  his  life,  bears 
in  tender  remembrance.  It  is  the  mother  who  sent  him  forth 
with  her  blessing.  A  mother  is  a  mother  still — the  holiest 
thing  alive  ;  and  if  I  could  dismiss  you  with  a  benediction 
to-night,  it  would  be  by  invoking  upon  the  heads  of  you  all 
the  blessing  of  the  mothers  that  we  left  behind  us.  [Pro- 
longed cheers.] 


AMERICA'S  GOLDEN    AGE 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate  at  the  seventy-seventh  anniversary  ban- 
quet of  the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22, 
1882.  Joseph  M.  Fiske,  President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair.  Mr. 
Choate  was  called  upon  to  respond  to  the  toast  "  Forefathers'  Day."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  New  Eng- 
land Society  : — We  have  come  together  here  to-night  for 
the  two  hundred  and  sixty-second  time  [laughter]  to  cele- 
brate the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  upon  that  rock  which  all 
men  now  recognize  as  the  corner-stone  of  liberty.  But 
thoufjh  it  be  a  corner-stone,  it  will  no  longer  do  for  us  to 
say,  as  Cotton  Mather  once  said,  that  the  sacrifices  and  sor- 
rows of  those  heroic  men  lie  hid  in  a  corner,  because  it  is 
now  settled  on  the  highest  authority  that  a  corner  is  the 
last  place  in  which  respectable  children  would  wish  to  find 
their  parents.     [Laughter.] 

Well,  gentlemen,  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  more  ways 
than  one  we  have  fairly  turned  the  tables  upon  those  far- 
away sires  of  ours.  They  shivered  in  the  wintry  blast  and 
toiled  and  starved  that  we  as  a  people  might  live.  We  glow 
with  generous  wine,  and  feast  upon  the  fat  of  the  land,  that 
their  memories  may  not  die.  [Laughter.]  If  they  could 
look  in  upon  us  here  to-night— those  high-crowned  and  hun- 
gry passengers  of  the  Mayflower — they  would  hardly  rec- 
ognize us  for  their  children.  If  they  could  listen  to  these 
our  annual  revels,  they  would  rather  mistake  us  for  the  sons 


l68  JOSEPH    HODGES    CHOATE 

of  those  I'oystering  rollickers  of  Merry-Mount,  and  would 
send  Miles  Standish  with  his  troop  of  eight  to  disperse  us 
at  the  muzzles  of  their  muskets.  I  don't  know  whether  we 
could  resist;  probably  we  could  rally  behind  our  Great  Cap- 
tain and  successfully  oppose  them.     [Applause.] 

Then,  too,  until  1690  the  Pilgrims  never  saw  a  newspaper ; 
among  them  the  reporter  was  an  unknown  terror  [laughter], 
and  the  interviewer  was  to  be  still  for  two  centuries  an  un- 
discovered horror.  [Laughter.]  And  yet  to-day  we  spread 
their  praise  abroad  upon  the  Avings  of  a  press  that  speaks 
with  a  million  voices. 

In  one  other  respect,  too,  the  age  of  the  Pilgrims  was  the 
golden  age  of  America,  for  Ovid  says  that  in  the  golden  age 
men  did  right  of  their  own  accord,  without  the  fear  of  laws  or 
the  aid  of  lawyers,  or  the  presence  of  the  judge,  and  we 
read  that  in  the  early  days  of  the  Plymouth  Colony  it  was 
the  same.  What  a  happy  people  they  were  to  be  vexed  by 
no  lawj'ers,  to  be  awed  by  no  judges  (saving  the  presence  of 
Judge  Lawrence),  and  never  under  any  circumstances  hav- 
ing a  session  of  the  Legislature  or  of  Congress  !     [Laughter.] 

It  was  not  until  a  whole  generation  later  that  the  eccen- 
tric people  of  Connecticut  enacted  the  "  blue  laws,"  and  here 
we,  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  at  the  instigation 
of  a  native  of  Haddam,  Connecticut,  under  the  form  of  a 
Penal  Code,  are  enacting  obnoxious  penalties  for  offences 
that  are  no  sins  [applause  and  laughter],  for  which,  let  me 
say,  the  ignorance  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  the  only 
excuse.     [Applause.] 

The  venerable  Secretary  of  this  Society,  Mr.  Luther  P. 
Hubbard  [laughter]— himself  the  sole  survivor  of  the  com- 
pany of  the  "  Mayflower,"  and  who  has  brought  down  to  our 
day,  in  his  own  person,  the  austere  morality  and  the  simple 
habits  of  his  fellow-passengers  [laughter] — has  been  in  the 
habit  of  declaring  any  time  in  these  last  fifty  years  that  the 
last  New  England  dinner  is  always  the  best.  And  this  un- 
happy company  of  Pilgrims,  Mr.  President,  who  meet  here 
annually  at  Delmonico's  to  drown  the  sorrows  and  sufferings 
of  their  ancestors  in  the  flowing  bowl  [laughter],  and  to  con- 
template their  own  virtues  in  the  mirror  of  history  [loud  ap- 
plause], are  wont  to  feel  as  every  year  comes  around  that 
there  is  more  cause  than  ever  to  celebrate  the  return  of  this 


AMERICA'S   GOLDEN    AGE  1 69 

great  day.  Perhaps  this  is  not  to  be  a  sohtary  exception  to 
the  record  of  our  annual  and  mutual  congratulation. 

A  celebrated  American  traveller  has  recorded  that  he  shed 
copious  tears  at  the  grave  of  Adam  [laughter],  and  I  suppose 
it  was  because  in  these  days  of  evolution  Adam  was  the  first 
authentic  ancestor  in  whose  identity  he  felt  any  confidence. 
[Laughter.]  But  we  have  got  far  beyond  that  ;  we  have  so 
thoroughly  schooled  ourselves  to  rejoice  instead  of  weeping 
over  the  afflictions  of  our  sires  that  on  this  day,  which 
records  the  darkest  hour  of  their  pilgrimage,  we  find  that 
festive  hilarity  is  the  most  appropriate  way  to  celebrate  their 
fearful  trials  and  perils.     [Laughter.] 

But  in  sober  earnest,  Mr.  President — if  this  company  will 
allow  me  to  be  sober  [laughter]  for  a  few  minutes  [laughter] — 
there  is,  this  year,  cause  for  solid  congratulation, 

A  great  tidal-wave  of  virtue  and  repentance  has  swept 
over  the  country.  Yes,  gentlemen,  it  has  just  swept  over 
the  land  from  Maine  to  California.  Reform  in  the  public 
household  is  the  recognized  order  of  the  day.  "  Honest 
politics  are  the  best,"  is  the  universal  cry.  Look  at  the  two 
great  parties  of  the  country  Avho  divide  it  all  between  them- 
selves:  how  they  arc  vying  with  each  other  to  see  which 
shall  profess  the  loudest  and  which  shall  be  first  to  have  the 
credit  of  putting  in  practice  those  principles  of  public  mor- 
ality and  of  good  government  which  they  know  the  people 
love!  [Applause.]  Even  dear  old  Massachusetts  is  kneel- 
ing with  the  rest  and  is  counting  her  beads  and  confessing 
her  sins,  [Laughter  and  applause.]  And  Congress,  too 
[laughter],  is  on  the  stool  of  repentance,  and  I  hope  she  may 
long  remain  there.  [Applause.]  She  really  seems  for  once 
to  be  in  sober  earnest,  trying  to  go  to  work  to  save  the  peo- 
ple's money,  and  to  take  off  the  heavy  burdens  that  rest  upon 
their  bending  backs.  Why,  it  seemed  for  a  long  time  as 
though  they  meant  really  to  imitate  the  Pilgrim  fathers  by 
working  all  through  the  Christmas  holidays,  [Laughter.] 
But  at  the  last  moment,  finding  that  the  New  England 
Society  was  not  going  to  adjourn  on  account  of  the  stress  of 
political  weather,  they  have  sent  some  of  their  representa- 
tives to  attend  its  dinners  in  the  various  cities,  in  the  hope 
that  they  would  imbibe  new  wisdom  and  fresh  virtue  with 
which  to  treat  their  good  resolution.     [Applause.] 


1 70  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

Why,  perhaps  the  millennium  is  coming  at  last,  and  we 
are  really  going  to  have  (as  I  believe  we  are,  if  this  storm 
continues  long  enough)  a  governmei\t  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  and  not  by  the  politicians  for  themselves.  [Ap- 
plause.] And  then,  perhaps,  the  first  American  Constitu- 
tion, that  was  written  in  the  cabin  of  the  "  Mayflower"  and 
signed  by  all  the  men  on  board,  for  the  institution  of  the 
new  government  on  the  basis  of  equal  laws,  passed  by  the 
whole  people,  for  the  general  benefit  of  the  whole  country, 
will  become  the  law  of  the  whole  land.  Gentlemen,  I  want 
to  read  that  constitution  to  you  for  my  one  serious  word 
to-night,  because,  short  as  it  is,  it  is  the  best  Republican  plat- 
form and  the  best  Democratic  platform  that  any  convention 
ever  adopted  :  "  In  the  name  of  God,  amen  :  We  whose 
names  are  hereunder  written,  the  loyal  subjects  of  our  dread 
sovereign  King  James,  having  undertaken,  for  the  glory  of 
God  and  the  honor  of  our  king  and  country,  a  voyage  to 
plant  the  first  colony  in  the  northern  parts  of  Virginia,  do 
by  these  presents  solemnly  and  mutually,  in  the  presence  of 
God  and  of  one  another,  covenant  and  bind  ourselves  together 
into  a  civil  body  politic  for  the  better  and  more  orderly 
preservation  of  the  community,  to  constitute  and  frame 
such  just  and  equal  laws  from  time  to  time  as  shall  be 
thought  most  convenient  for  the  general  good  of  the  whole 
country,  unto  which  we  promise  all  due  submission  and 
obedience." 

As  Bancroft  has  well  said,  there  is  the  very  birth  of  pop- 
ular constitutional  liberty,  and  it  breathes  the  same  spirit 
that  inspired  the  utterance  of  the  sainted  Lincoln  on  the 
field  of  Gettysburg,  in  honor  of  the  dead  heroes  of  the  war 
— that  briefest  and  best  eulogy  that  ever  was  spoken.  But, 
Mr.  Chairman,  I  need  not  wander  far  in  search  of  cause 
for  congratulation,  when  I  look  up  and  down  this  table  and 
see  how  all  the  best  part  of  mankind  is  represented  by  these 
guests  who  have  joined  us  to-night  to  assist  us  in  honoring 
the  memory  of  our  fathers.  How,  for  instance,  could  the 
United  States  of  America  be  so  fitly  represented  and  re- 
sponded to  as  by  that  great  soldier  who  long  ago  spoke  for 
her  at  the  cannon's  mouth  in  thunder-tones  that  still  echo 
around  the  globe?  [Applause.]  I  believe  that  he  had  not 
,  the  good  fortune  to  be  born  on   the  soil  of   New    England, 


America's  golden  age  171 

but  then  we  claim  him  as  the  closest  of  kindred,  for,  if  I 
mistake  not,  he  is  the  grandson  of  a  Connecticut  captain 
who  drew  his  sword  at  Bunker  Hill  for  independence  and 
fought  at  Yorktown  for  the  union  of  the  States.  [Applause.] 
I  find  on  the  list,  too,  a  toast  to  the  great  State  of  New 
York,  that  State  which  belongs  to  the  Yankees  just  as 
much  by  right  of  occupation  as  it  does  to  its  own  natives. 
[Applause.]  I  am  sorry  that  Governor  Cornell  is  detained 
by  illness  from  being  here  to-night,  for  I  know  this  com- 
pany would  like  to  congratulate  him  upon  liis  honorable 
administration  [applause],  an  administration  which  has  com- 
manded the  gratitude  and  confidence   of  his   fellow-citizens. 

The  City  of  New  York,  too — our  City  of  Refuge  [laughter], 
whose  faults  we  acknowledge  and  attribute  to  others  [laugh- 
ter], whose  merits  and  glories  we  enjoy  as  if  they  were  our 
ovvn  [laughter] — she  is  fitly  represented  by  her  honored 
chief  magistrate.  [Applause.]  Tradition  says  that  the  Pil- 
grims themselves  intended  to  land  here  and  to  be  the  first 
upon  the  spot,  but  they  Avere  wafted  by  wayward  breezes 
to  the  more  sterile  shores  of  Cape  Cod.  But,  gentlemen, 
we  have  done  our  best  to  redeem  the  errors  of  our  fathers, 
and  have  recaptured,  after  two  centuries,  the  prize  which 
they  so  narrowly  lost. 

And  then  women — the  better  half  of  the  Yankee  world, 
at  whose  tender  summons  even  the  stern  Pilgrims  were  ever 
ready  to  spring  to  arms  [laughter],  and  without  whose  aid 
they  never  would  have  achieved  their  historic  title  of  the 
Pilgrims  Fathers  [laughter] — they  are  to  be  escorted  into 
your  presence  to-night  by  one  who  is  never  tired  of  cele- 
brating the  "  Innocents,"  whether  abroad  or  at  home. 
[Applause.] 

The  great  State  of  Massachusetts,  too,  has  sent  the  worthy 
representative  of  Endicott  and  VVinthrop  and  Carver  to  speak 
for  her  in  person — an  almost  unprecedented  honor,  which  I 
am  sure  you  will  duly  appreciate.  [Applause.]  For  if  the 
Pilgrims  Fathers  had  done  nothing  more  than  to  be  the 
founders  of  such  a  State — so  rich  in  education,  so  loyal  to 
public  virtue,  so  steadfast  for  freedom — they  certainly  would 
have  commanded  the  lasting  gratitude  of  mankind.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

I    am  sure  you  would  not  allow  me  to  quit  this    pleasing 


172  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

programme  if  I  did  not  felicitate  you  upon  the  presence  of 
two  other  gentlemen — those  twin  hail  fellows,  well  met,  at 
every  festive  board — without  whom  no  banquet  is  ever 
complete  ;  I  mean,  of  course.  Mr.  Depewand  General  Porter. 
[Applause.]  Their  splendid  efforts  on  a  thousand  fields  like 
this  have  fairly  won  their  golden  spurs.  [Laughter.]  I 
forget  whether  it  was  Pythagoras  or  Emerson  who  finally 
decided  that  the  soul  of  mankind  is  located  in  the  stomach, 
but  these  two  gentlemen,  certainly,  by  their  achievements 
on  such  arenas  as  this  have  demonstrated  at  least  this  rule 
of  anatomy,  that  the  pyloric  orifice  is  the  shortest  cut  to  the 
human  brain,  [Laughter.]  Their  well-won  title  of  first  of 
dinner-orators  is  the  true  survival  of  the  fittest,  for  I  assure 
you  that  their  triumphant  struggles  in  all  these  many  years 
at  scenes  like  this  would  long  ago  have  laid  all  the  rest  of  us 
under  the  table,  if  not  under  the  sod.  And  so  I  think  in 
your  names  I  may  bid  them  welcome,  thrice  welcome — duo 
fidviina  belli.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

Mr.  President,  my  ten  minutes  are  exhausted,  and  I  have 
not  yet  got  to  my  subject — that  splendid  theme — "  The 
Day  we  Celebrate,"  and  those  heroes  and  heroines  who  made 
it  immortal. 

When  that  little  company  of  Nonconformists  at  Scrooby, 
with  Elder  William  Brewster  at  their  head,  having  lost  all 
but  conscience  and  honor,  took  their  lives  in  their  hands  and 
fled  to  Protestant  Holland,  seeking  nothing  but  freedom  to 
worship  God  in  their  own  way  and  to  earn  their  scanty  bread 
by  the  sweat  of  their  brows — when  they  toiled  and  wor- 
shipped there  in  Leyden  for  twelve  long  and  suffering  years 
— when  at  last  longing  for  a  larger  liberty  they  crossed  the 
raging  Atlantic  in  that  crazy  little  bark  that  bore  at  the 
peak  the  cross  of  St.  George,  the  sole  emblem  of  their 
country  and  their  hopes — Avhen  they  landed  in  the  dead 
of  winter  on  a  stern  and  rock-bound  coast — when  they  saw 
before  the  spring  came  around  one  entire  half  of  the  number 
of  their  dear  comrades  perished  of  cold  and  want — when 
they  knew  not  where  to  lay  their  heads — 

'■  They  little  thought  how  clear  a  light 

With  years  should  gather  round  this  day, 
How  love  should  keep  their  memories  bright  ; 
How  wide  a  realm  their  sous  should  sway  ;  " 


HARVARD    UNIVERSITY  1 73 

how  the  day  and  the  place  should  be  honored  as  the  source 
from  which  true  liberty  derived  its  birth,  and  how  at  last  a 
nation  of  fifty  millions  of  freemen  would  bend  in  homage 
over  their  shrine. 

We  honor  them  for  their  dauntless  courage,  for  their  sub- 
lime virtue,  for  their  self-denial,  for  their  hard  work,  for  their 
common-sense,  for  their  ever-living  sense  of  duty,  for  their 
fear  of  God  that  cast  out  all  other  fears,  and  for  their  raging 
thirst  for  liberty. 

In  common  with  all  those  generations  through  which  we 
trace  our  proud  lineage  to  their  hardy  stock,  we  owe  a  great 
share  of  all  that  we  have  achieved,  and  all  that  we  enjoy  of 
strength,  of  freedom,  of  prosperity,  to  their  matchless  virtue 
and  their  grand  example. 

So  long  as  America  continues  to  love  truth  and  duty,  so 
long  as  she  cherishes  liberty  and  justice,  she  will  never  tire 
of  hearing  the  praises  of  the  Pilgrims,  or  of  heaping  fresh 
laurels  upon  their  altar.     [Loud  applause  and  cheers.] 


HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate,  as  presiding  officer  at  the  Harvard  Alumni 
dinner,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  June  27,  18S3.  This  was  the  year  of  General 
Benjamin  F.  Butler's  incumbency  of  the  Governorship  of  Massachusetts, 
when  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.,  which  it  had  been  customary  for 
Harvard  to  confer  upon  each  new  Governor  of  the  State,  was  withheld. 
Governor  Butler's  presence  at  the  dinner,  in  accordance  with  custom, 
heightened  the  interest  in  the  occasion.] 

Brethren  of  the  Alumni  : — I  hardly  know  how  to  be- 
gin. My  head  swims  when  I  look  down  from  the  giddy  and 
somewhat  dangerous  elevation  to  which  you  have  unwit- 
tingly raised  me.  Here  have  I  been  seated  for  the  last  hour 
between  the  two  hornsof  a  veritable  dilemma.  [Laughter.] 
On  the  one  side  the  President  of  the  University  [cheers], 
on  the  other  His  Excellency  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts 
[applause],  whom  to-day  we  welcome  to  the  hospitalities  of 
Harvard.  [Prolonged  applause.]  As  to  our  worthy  Presi- 
dent— you  all  know  him — you  know  how  he  strikes — always 
from  the  shoulder — a  true  Harvard  athlete,  and  how  idle  it 


174  JOSEPH    HODGEiJ   CHOATE 

is  for  any  ordinary  alumnus  to  contend  with  him.  [Ap- 
plause.] And  as  to  his  Excellency,  a  long  professional  ob- 
servation and  some  experience  of  him  have  taught  me  that 
he,  too,  like  the  President,  is  a  safe  man  to  let  alone, — 
Experto  credite.  Quantiis  in  clypeiiui  asstirgat,  quo  turbine 
torqucat  Jiastani.  Well,  I  assure  you  I  have  found  it  a  most 
safe  and  comfortable  seat.  I  have  got  along  splendidly  with 
both  by  agreeing  exactly  to  everything  that  each  of  them 
has  said.  [Laughter.]  For  you  know  the  horns  of  a 
dilemma,  however  perilous  they  may  be  to  their  victims, 
never  can  come  in  conflict  with  each  other.  [Laughter.] 
And  so,  directly  between  them,  if  you  take  care  to  hold  on, 
as  I  have  done,  tight  to  each,  you  are  sure  to  find  safety  and 
repose.  [Laughter.]  UTedio  tutissiinus  ibis.  I  accept  it  as 
a  happy  omen, — prophetic,  let  us  hope,  of  that  peace  and 
harmony  which  shall  govern  this  meeting  to  its  close.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

And  now,  brethren,  I  am  at  a  loss  whether  to  thank  you 
or  not  for  the  honor  you  have  done  me  in  calling  me  to  pre- 
side on  this  occasion,  for  it  was  only  when  the  alumni  of 
Harvard  had  lost  their  head  that  they  invited  me  to  supply 
its  place.  [Laughter.]  I  sincerely  regret  the  absence  from 
this  chair  to-day  of  that  distinguished  gentleman  who 
should  have  occupied  it,  in  deference  to  your  wishes,  ex- 
pressed by  your  ballots.  [Applause.]  His  character,  his 
eloquence,  and  his  life-long  loyalty  to  Harvard,  would  have 
graced  and  adorned  the  occasion,  and  we  all  lament  his  ab- 
sence. But  though  the  association  of  the  alumni  is  for  the- 
moment  without  a  head.  Harvard  College  still  lives,  and  to- 
day is  younger  and  fresher,  more  vigorous  and  more  power- 
ful, than  ever  before.     [Applause.] 

With  the  pious  devotion  of  elder  children,  we  have  come 
up  here  to-day  to  attend  upon  our  venerable  Alma  Mater 
in  the  hour  of  her  annual  travail  [laughter],  and  gathered 
about  her  couch  with  patient  reverence  to  witness  the  birth 
of  the  latest  addition  to  the  family,  those  two  hundred  and 
five  new  pledges  of  her  never-failing  and  ever-renewing 
creative  power.  [Laughter.]  We  wish  them  Godspeed  on 
that  journey  of  life  which  they  have  to-day  so  auspiciously 
begun.  [Applause.]  The  degree  conferred  upon  them  this 
morning  is  an  assurance  to  the  world  that  they  start  in  the 


HARVARD    UNIVERSITY  175 

race  with  more  or  less  learning — some  of  them  a  good  deal 
more,  and  some  of  them  a  good  deal  less.  [Laughter.] 
But  let  us  hope  that  every  man  of  them  has  got  and  carries 
away  with  him  what  is  better  than  all  their  learning,  and 
what  it  has  been  our  boast  to  believe,  that  the  training  of 
Harvard  has  always  tended  to  cultivate,  an  honest  and  manly 
character,  a  hatred  of  all  shams  and  humbugs  [prolonged 
applause],  an  earnest  purpose  to  make  the  most  of  them- 
selves, and  to  serve  their  times  as  men,  and  their  country 
as  good  citizens  and  patriots.     [Applause.] 

I  think  we  may  well  congratulate  each  other  upon  the 
dignified  and  proud  attitude  which  Harvard  University  now 
presents  to  the  country  and  to  the  world  [applause];  and 
that  she  has  made  more  real  and  lasting  progress  in  the  last 
fifteen  years  than  in  any  prior  period  of  her  history  [applause] 
- — a  progress  due  in  large  measure  to  the  hopeful  wisdom  and 
tireless  energy  of  President  Eliot.  [Enthusiastic  applause 
and  cheers.]  He  found  here  a  local  college  whose  adminis- 
tration, whose  standard,  whose  system,  had  undergone  no 
radical  change  for  generations;  and  to-day  he  presents  her 
to  the  world  a  great  and  national  university,  and  the  national 
features  and  relations  of  Harvard  are  now  its  most  striking 
and  attractive  ones.  No  State — not  even  Massachusetts — 
can  any  longer  appropriate  her.  [Applause.]  No  city — 
not  even  Boston — can  any  longer  claim  her  for  its  own. 
[Applause.]  She  belongs  henceforth  to  the  whole  country, 
and  is  justly  regarded  at  home  and  abroad  as  the  one 
typical  American  university.  [Applause.]  Perhaps  we  of 
the  alumni  who  live  in  other  and  distant  parts  of  the  coun- 
try can  appreciate  this  change  better  than  those  of  you 
whose  lives  are  spent  almost  within  the  shadow  of  her  elms. 
The  tide  is  setting  towards  Harvard  across  the  whole  con- 
tinent. Her  examinations,  carried  first  to  New  York,  and 
then  to  Cincinnati,  and  then  to  Chicago,  and  at  last  to  the 
Pacific  coast,  have  raised  the  standard  of  education  and 
the  quality  of  the  schools  throughout  the  whole  country 
[applause]  ;  and  this  influence  is  yearly  increasing.  And 
the  diplomas  of  her  professional  schools  now  carry  into  all 
the  States  an  assurance  of  new  and  increased  fitness  for 
the  commencement  of  professional  life.     [Applause.] 

The  best  test  of  your  success,  Mr.  President,  is  that  other 


176  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

colleges  are  rapidly  beginning  to  adopt  and  accept  your 
system  and  your  reforms.  Even  the  meagre  little  that 
Harvard  has  yet  done  for  the  education  of  women,  is  begin- 
ning to  bear  fruit  elsewhere.  [Applause,]  To-day,  Colum- 
bia, forced  by  the  pressure  of  public  opinion,  with  tardy 
and  reluctant  hand  is  beginning  to  dole  out  to  women  a  few 
stale  and  paltry  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  bountiful  table 
in  distant  imitation  of  the  Harvard  Annex.  [Applause.] 
Of  course  Harvard  will  by  and  by  do  a  great  deal  more  for 
them  than  she  has  done  yet  [applause],  and  Madam  Boyls- 
ton,  who  alone  of  her  sex  has  held  her  solitary  place  on 
these  walls  for  nearly  a  century,  among  these  shades  of 
learned  men,  looks  down  upon  me  with  smiling  approval 
when  I  say  that  somehow  or  other,  sooner  or  later,  Harvard 
will  yet  give  the  women  a  better  chance  for  education,  as 
Cambridge  and  Oxford  have  already  done.     [Applause.] 

No  enumeration,  Mr.  President,  of  the  glories  of  Harvard 
would  be  quite  complete  which  omitted  to  refer  to  the  ath- 
letic development  of  these  latter  days.  Voltaire  wrote  to 
Helvetius:  "  The  body  of  an  athlete  and  the  soul  of  a  sage 
are  what  we  require  to  be  happy."  How  prophetic  of  to- 
day's curriculum  at  Harvard  !  [Laughter.]  To-morrow  at 
New  London  will  put  our  muscle  and  our  mettle  to  the 
test.  Let  us  pray  for  the  pluck  and  the  wind  and  the  bot- 
tom of  the  Harvard  crew.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

I  must  not  prolong  these  pleasing  bits  of  eloquence 
[laughter],  or  else  his  Excellency  will  begin  to  expect  that 
we  sons  of  Harvard  think  a  little  too  much  of  ourselves. 
[Laughter.]  Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth  than 
that.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  Yet  I  need  not  assure 
him,  because  he  knows  it  already,  that  it  is  our  true  boast 
that  an  overweening  modesty  is  the  leading  Harvard  attri- 
bute. [Laughter.]  But  let  me  before  closing  refer  to  one 
or  two  special  incidents  of  the  day.  It  is  now  two  hundred 
and  forty-five  years  since  John  Harvard  died  at  Charlestown, 
bequeathing  his  fair  name,  his  library  and  the  half  of  his 
estate  to  the  infant  college  in  the  wilderness,  then  just 
struggling  into  existence  and  matriculating  its  first  freshman 
class  of  nine.  He  surely  builded  wiser  than  he  knew ;  he 
died  all  unconscious  of  the  immortality  of  glory  that  awaited 
him,  for  it  was  not  till  after  his  death  that  the  General 


HARVARD    UxNIVERSITY  177 

Court  voted,  in  recognition  of  his  generous  gifts,  to  change 
the  name  of  the  little  college  at  Newton  to  Harvard  College. 
And  now,  after  eight  generations  of  graduates  have  been 
baptized  in  his  name,  a  pious  worshipper  at  his  shrine,  turn- 
ing his  face  towards  Mecca,  has  presented  to  the  alumni 
a  bronze  statue  of  our  prophetic  founder,  which  is  to  be 
erected  at  the  head  of  the  delta,  and  to  stand  for  coming 
ages  as  the  guardian  genius  of  the  college.  [Applause.] 
Let  me  read  the  letter  which  precedes  the  gift,  and  I  will 
say  that  the  writer  and  the  giver,  a  gentlemen  here  present, 
from  whom  and  of  whom  I  hope  we  shall  hear  more  by  and 
by,  is  Mr.  Samuel  J.  Bridge,  of  Boston.  The  letter  is  as 
follows  : — 

To  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College : 

Gentlemen, — I  have  the  pleasure  of  offermg  you  an  ideal  statue  in  bronze 
representing  your  founder,  the  Rev.  John  Harvard,  to  be  designed  by  Daniel 
C.  French,  of  Concord,  and  to  be  placed  in  the  west  end  of  the  enclosure  in 
which  Memorial  Hall  stands.  If  you  do  me  the  honor  to  accept  this  offer,  I 
propose  to  contract  at  once  for  the  work,  including  an  appropriate  pedestal, 
and  I  am  assured  that  the  statue  can  be  in  place  by  June  i,  18S4.  I  am,  with 
much  respect, 

Samuel  J.  Bridge. 

[The  reading  of  the  letter  was  followed  by  loud  applause, 
which  became  more  enthusiastic  when  Mr.  Bridge  rose  in 
his  place  on  the  platform  and  bowed  his  acknowledg- 
ments.] 

I  am  sure,  gentlemen,  that  I  can  assure  the  generous  donor, 
in  your  name,  of  the  hearty  thanks  of  all  the  alumni  of  the 
college,  those  who  are  here  to-day  and  those  who  are  scat- 
tered throughout  the  country  and  the  world.     [Applause.] 

Other  generous  gifts  commemorate  this  occasion, — a 
marble  bust  of  General  William  F.  Bartlett  [prolonged 
applause  and  cheers],  of  the  class  of  1862, — a  hero,  if  God 
ever  made  one  [applause],  a  martyr  who  was  fourteen  years 
dying  for  his  country  of  wounds  that  he  bore  for  her,— is 
placed  in  this  hall  to-day  to  stay  as  long  as  marble  shall 
endure  in  the  fit  company  of  heroes  and  martyrs  to  whom 
its  walls  are  dedicated.  [Applause.]  Colonel  Henry  Lee, 
by  and  by,  will  formally  present  it  to  you,  and  also  a  bust 
of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  sacred  forever  within  these  walls, 
[Applause.]     Surely,  if   Harvard  had  never  produced  any* 


178  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

thing  but  Emerson,  she  would  have  been  entitled  to  a  front 
rank  among  the  great  universities.      [Applause.] 

But,  brethren,  I  know  you  are  all  impatient  to  hear  those 
you  have  come  to  hear.  [Applause.]  You  cannot  wait  any 
longer,  I  am  sure,  to  hear  from  our  excellent  President  his 
annual  message  of  comfort  and  distress.  [Laughter  and  ap- 
plause.] He  will  tell  you  all  that  the  college  in  the  last 
year  has  done  for  you,  and  all  that  you  in  return  in  the  year 
to  come  are  expected  to  do  for  the  college.  [Laughter  and 
applause.]  It  will  also  be  your  privilege  to  hear  from  the 
people  of  Massachusetts,  as  represented  in  the  person  of  his 
Excellency  the  Governor  [prolonged  applause  and  cheers], 
who  has  come  here  to-day  by  the  invitation  of  the  President 
and  Fellows,  which  he  accepted  in  deference  to  an  ancient 
custom  not  easily  to  be  broken.  [Applause  and  laughter.] 
You  all  remember,  gentlemen,  that  intimate  and  honorable 
alliance  that  has  existed  between  the  college  and  the  State 
for  nearly  two  centuries,  out  of  tender  regard  for  which  tradi- 
tion assures  us  that  every  Commencement,  beginning  with 
that  of  1642,  has  been  graced  by  the  presence  of  the  Governor 
of  the  Commonwealth.  [Applause.]  And,  for  one,  I  hope 
the  day  may  be  far,  very  far,  distant  when  the  Governor  of 
Massachusetts  shall  fail  to  be  welcomed  on  Commencement 
day  within  the  walls  of  Harvard.  [Prolonged  applause.] 
Li  the  name  of  Massachusetts  we  greet  him,  remembering, 
as  we  may  fitly  remember  in  this  place  sacred  to  heroic  deeds, 
that  it  was  he  who,  at  the  call  of  Andrew,  led  the  advanced 
guard  of  Massachusetts,  in  which  certain  sons  of  Harvard 
were  a  part,  to  the  rescue  and  the  relief  of  the  besieged 
capital  [applause]  ;  that  Lincoln  set  his  seal  upon  that  service 
by  commissioning  their  commander  as  a  major-general  of 
the  United  States  [applause],  and  that  it  did  not  need  that 
diploma  to  prove  that  he  bore,  and  they  followed  to  the 
front,  the  ancient  standard  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  spirit  of 
Sidney's  motto,  which  the  State  has  made  its  own, — Ense 
petit  placidavi  sub  libcrtate  quicteni. 

And  now,  gentlemen,  I  give  you  the  first  regular  toast, 
"  Our  Beloved  Alma  Mater,"  and  I  propose  with  it  the  health 
of  the  head  of  her  great  family.  President  Eliot,  who  will 
now  address  you  to  your  lasting  benefit.     [Loud  applause.] 


BRITISH    EVACUATION    OF    NEW   YORK  1 79 


BRITISH  EVACUATION  OF  NEW  YORK 

[vSpeech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate  at  the  banquet  of  the  Chamber  of  Coin- 
merce  of  the  State  of  New  York,  November  26,  1S83,  in  commemora- 
tion of  the  Evacuation  of  the  City  of  New  York  by  the  British,  NovemV-er 
25.  1783-  'fl^e  President  of  the  Chamber,  George  W.  Lane,  occupied  the 
chair.  In  introducing  the  speaker,  Mr.  Lane  said  :  "The  fourth  reguUir 
toast  is,  '  The  Day  we  Celebrate— the  vSecond  Birthday  of  New  York.  Out 
of  the  ashes  of  the  Revolution  in  the  gladsome  light  of  liberty  and  peace, 
she  rose  to  her  place  as  the  metropolis  of  the  Continent.'  This  will  be 
responded  to  by  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Choate."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  :— I  came  here  to- 
night  with  some  notes  for  a  speech  in  my  pocket,  but  I 
have  been  sitting  next  to  General  Butler  and  in  the  course  of 
the  evening  they  have  mysteriously  disappeared.  [Loud 
laughter,  in  which  General  Butler  joined.]  The  consequence 
is,  gentlemen,  that  you  may  expect  a  very  good  speech 
from  him  and  a  very  poor  one  from  me.  [Laughter.]  Your 
committee,  Mr.  President,  found  me  amid  the  ruins  of 
the  temple  of  Golgos,  into  which  the  Federal  Court  has  for 
the  time  being  been  converted,  engaged  in  the  study  of 
Cypriote  antiquities,*  and  they  did  me  the  very  great  honor 
of  asking  me  to  come  here  to-night  and  take  part  in  the 
merchants'  celebration  of  the  Evacuation  of  New  York  by 
the  British.  Well,  it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  a  man 
whose  whole  soul  is  absorbed  in  the  study  of  ancient  art 
and  in  the  resurrection  of  gods  and  demigods  that  have 
slumbered  in  the  dust  of  Cyprus  for  fifteen  hundred  years, 
until  their  very  identity  is  brought  into  question  [laughter], 
should  have  much  thought  or  emotion  left  for  such  an 
event  of  yesterday  as  the  evacuation  of  New  York  by  the 
British,  which  occurred  but  a  century  ago.  [Laughter.] 
And  so  if  my  thoughts  prove  to  be  wandering  and  scattered 
and  even  little  better  than  a  "patchwork  of  unrelated 
parts"  [laughter],  why,  gentlemen,  you  will  not  lay  it  to 
any  want  of  patriotism  but  only  the  pressure  of  circum- 
stances. [Laughter.]  When  I  read  this  toast  which  you 
have  just  drunk  in  honor  of  Her  Gracious  Majesty,  the 
*  The  Feuardent-Ccsnola  suit. 


l8o  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

Queen  of  Great  Britain,  and  heard  how  you  received  the 
letter  of  the  British  Minister  that  was  read  in  response,  and 
how  heartily  you  joined  in  singing  "  God  Save  the  Queen," 
when  I  look  up  and  down  these  tables  and  see  among  you 
so  many  representatives  of  English  capital  and  English 
trade,  I  have  my  doubts  whether  the  evacuation  of  New 
York  by  the  British  was  quite  as  thorough  and  lasting  as 
history  would  fain  have  us  believe.  [Laughter.]  If 
George  III,  who  certainly  did  all  he  could  to  despoil  us  of 
our  rights  and  liberties  and  bring  us  to  ruin — if  he  could 
rise  from  his  grave  and  see  how  his  granddaughter  is 
honored  at  your  hands  to-night,  why,  I  think  he  would 
return  whence  he  came,  thanking  God  that  his  efforts  to 
enslave  us,  in  which  for  eight  long  years  he  drained 
the  resources  of  the  British  Empire,  were  not  successful. 
[Applause.] 

The  truth  is,  the  boasted  triumph  of  New  York  in  get- 
ting rid  of  the  British  once  and  forever  has  proved,  after  all, 
to  be  but  a  dismal  failure.  We  drove  them  out  in  one 
century  only  to  see  them  return  in  the  next  to  devour  our 
substance  and  to  carry  off  all  the  honors.  [Applause.] 
We  have  just  seen  the  noble  Chief  Justice  of  England,  the 
feasted  favorite  of  all  America,  making  a  triumphal  tour 
across  the  Continent  and  carrying  all  before  him  at  the  rate 
of  fifty  miles  an  hour.  [Applause.]  Night  after  night  at 
our  very  great  cost  we  have  been  paying  the  richest 
tribute  to  the  reigning  monarch  of  the  British  stage,  and 
nowhere  in  the  world  are  English  men  and  women  of 
character  and  culture  received  with  a  more  hearty  welcome, 
a  more  earnest  hospitality,  than  in  this  very  State  of  New 
York.  [Applause.]  The  truth  is,  that  this  event  that  we 
celebrate  to-day,  which  sealed  the  independence  of  America 
and  seemed  for  the  time  to  give  a  staggering  blow  to  the 
prestige  and  the  power  of  England,  has  proved  to  be  no 
less  a  blessing  to  her  own  people  than  to  ours.  [Applause.] 
The  latest  and  best  of  the  English  historians  has  said 
that,  however  important  the  independence  of  America 
might  be  in  the  history  of  England,  it  was  of  overwhelming 
importance  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and  that  though  it 
might  have  crippled  for  a  while  the  supremacy  of  the 
English  nation,  it  founded  the  supremacy  of  the  English 


BRITISH    EVACUATION   OF   NEW  YORK  l8l 

race  [applause] ;  and  after  tracing  the  growth  of  America 
from  three  millions  of  people  scattered  along  the  Atlantic 
coast,  in  1783,  to  fifty  millions  of  people  filling  the  whole 
continent  to-day,  he  declares  that,  in  wealth  and  imperial 
energy  as  well  as  in  numbers,  it  far  surpasses  the  mother 
country  from  which  it  sprang  ;  that  it  has  become  the  main 
branch  of  the  English  people  and  that  the  history  of  that 
people  henceforth  is  to  run  along  the  channel,  not  of  the 
Thames  and  the  Mersey,  but  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Miss- 
issippi. [Applause.]  And  in  the  same  spirit  we  welcome 
the  fact  that  those  social,  political  and  material  barriers 
that  separated  the  two  nations  a  century  ago  have  now 
utterly  vanished  ;  that  year  by  year  we  are  being  drawn 
closer  and  closer  together,  and  that  this  day  may  be  cele- 
brated with  equal  fitness  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  and 
by  all  who  speak  the  English  tongue.     [Applause,] 

The  Chamber  of  Commerce,  gentlemen, — our  noble  host 
of  to-night — has  its  own  appropriate  method  of  celebrating 
great  public  events.  It  cares  for  no  grand  processions,  it 
delighteth  not  in  long  orations  [laughter],  but  I  must  beg 
pardon  both  of  Mr.  Beecher  and  General  Butler  for  saying 
that — I  did  not  mean  to  tread  on  either  of  their  corns. 
[Laughter.]  This  Chamber  indulges  in  no  fireworks,  but 
being  made  up  of  none  but  solid  and  prosperous  men,  it 
comes  directly  to  the  point  and  celebrates  at  the  same 
time  its  own  virtues  and  merits  [laughter],  and  the  event 
or  the  scene  which  it  seeks  to  commemorate  by  a  glorious 
and  gorgeous  banquet  such  as  it  has  spread  before  us  to- 
night. Thus  it  reaches  the  sympathies  of  its  members 
[laughter]  in  a  way  that  could  not  otherwise  be  done — 
through  the  broad  avenue  of  the  stomach  [laughter],  which 
Emerson  long  ago  said  was  with  all  the  branches  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  the  direct  and  shortest  cut  to  their  hearts. 
[Laughter.]  This  genial  method  of  celebrating,  gentlemen, 
is  another  charming  trait  which  we  have  derived  with  our 
blood  from  our  remote  English  ancestors  ;  for  a  celebrated 
Venetian  traveller,  visiting  England  as  long  ago  as  1 500, 
wrote  home  to  a  friend  :  "  The  people  of  this  island  are  so 
given  to  hospitality  that  they  really  would  rather  spend  ten 
ducats  in  entertaining  a  stranger  handsomely  than  give  a 
single   groat   to    aid    any    in    distress."      [Laughter.]     But 


1 82  JOSEPH    HODGES  CHOATE 

when  we  remember  how  promptly  the  hands  of  the  New  York 
merchants  leap  to  their  pockets  to  relieve  distress  wherever 
it  appears,  it  must  be  said  that  the  race  has  marvellously 
developed,  and  that  if  these  are  Englishmen,  why,  they  are 
Englishmen  with  all  the  modern  improvements.    [Applause.] 

This  fine  method  of  celebration,  gentlemen,  derives  double 
strength  from  the  charming  power  of  contrast.  It  was 
a  very  hungry  and  thirsty  day  that  we  now  commemorate. 
New  York  was  pretty  nearly  starved  out  by  those  seven 
years  of  hostile  occupation.  It  was  to  no  such  bill  of  fare 
as  this  that  Washington  and  Hamilton  and  Clinton  and 
their  compatriots  sat  down  in  Fraunces'  tavern  a  hundred 
years  ago  to-night.  But  this  I  hope,  gentlemen,  that  the 
same  ardent  love  of  liberty  and  the  same  undying  devotion 
to  country  serves  as  the  same  relish  to  both  feasts.  [Loud 
applause.] 

But  I  must  return  to  the  particular  subject  of  my  toast. 
I  am  a  little  off  the  track.  [Laughter.]  The  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  which  owns  everything  in  New  York,  and  which 
always  does  what  it  likes,  in  its  own  way,  thinks  what  it 
pleases,  says  what  it  pleases,  and  above  all,  eats  and  drinks 
what  it  pleases, — the  summit  of  ordinary  human  ambition — 
has  invited  us  to-night  to  celebrate  the  day  that  the  toast 
very  truthfully  describes  as  the  "  second  birthday  "  of  this 
great  city,  in  which  we  live  and  which  this  mixed  company 
of  Yankees,  Germans,  Hebrews,  Scotchmen,  Irishmen,  South- 
erners and  Danes,  with  here  and  there  scattered  a  lost  Knick- 
erbocker [laughter],  are  proud  to  call  their  home. 

It  has  been  the  misfortune  of  all  the  great  cities  that  have 
preceded  us  that  their  origin  was  lost  in  the  mists  of  tradi- 
tion in  a  time  that  runs  beyond  the  memory  of  man.  But 
fortunately  the  art  of  printing  preceded  by  nearly  two  cen- 
turies the  settlement  of  New  Amsterdam,  and  every  step  of 
its  progress  is  recorded  in  the  imperishable  letter  of  history, 
so  that  we  can  turn  to  the  book  and  the  page  for  each  one 
of  the  Red  Letter  days  in  its  annals.  We  not  only  know 
the  day  but  the  hour  and  the  very  time  of  the  tide  when 
Hendrick  Hudson  anchored  in  the  Half  Moon  inside  of 
Sandy  Hook  and  hoisted  the  Dutch  flag  to  take  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  soil  for  Holland.  W^e  preserve  the  parchment 
by  which  the   first   settlers  purchased   from  the  Indians  the 


BRITISH    EVACUATION    Of-    .^EW   YOPK  183 

whole  Island  of  Manhattan  for  the  sum  of  twenty-four  dol- 
lars. Wc  can  trace  in  the  veracious  history  of  Washington 
Irving  the  truthful  details  of  all  the  sixty  years  of  the  period 
of  the  Dutch  dominion,  until  that  fatal  day  when  Charles  II, 
exercising  that  time-honored  prerogative  of  a  British  mon- 
arch to  give  away  what  did  not  belong  to  him  (which  he 
had,  you  know,  from  William  the  Norman  who  gave  away 
all  England  without  owning  one  foot  of  it),  handed  over  the 
whole  City  and  Province  together  in  a  fit  of  generous  liber- 
ality to  his  brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  who  straightway 
imposed  upon  the  unwilling  inhabitants  a  name  which,  in 
time,  was  to  redeem  his  own  from  dishonored  oblivion.  We 
can  trace,  too,  year  by  year  the  annals  of  the  hundred  years 
of  English  dominion  during  which  the  people  of  this  city  so 
learned  the  principles  of  English  liberty  that  when  the  hand 
of  oppression  was  laid  upon  them,  it  merely  awoke  them  to 
independence,  and  the  best  statesmen  of  England  at  once 
conceded  that  it  was  impossible  to  conquer  America. 
[Applause.] 

This  memorable  day,  gentlemen,  closes  the  long  series  of 
Centennial  memories  which  began  in  April,  1775,  at  Lexing- 
ton and  has  marked  and  illuminated  each  historic  spot,  each 
scene  of  trial  and  of  conflict,  each  field  of  victory  that  to- 
gether make  up  our  Revolutionary  struggle.  We  should 
have  been  base  ingrates  indeed,  if  we  had  neglected  any  of 
those  golden  occasions,  to  record  our  gratitude  and  admi- 
ration for  the  services  by  which  our  fathers  laid  the  foun- 
dations of  that  liberty  and  union  which  in  a  single  century 
have  brought  us  where  we  now  stand.  But  of  all  the  his- 
toric jubilees,  there  is  not  one  which  New  York  can  celebrate 
with  greater  spirit  or  more  hearty  enthusiasm  than  that 
day  which  saw  the  last  remnant  of  the  British  and  Hessian 
army  embark  at  the  Battery,  and  Washington  and  war-worn 
veterans  treading  upon  their  heels  to  raise  upon  Fort  George 
for  the  first  time  the  Stars  and  Stripes  as  the  emblem  of  a 
free  nation.  [Applause.]  People  understand  this  a  great 
deal  better  than  words  can  describe  it,  as  tlieir  swarming 
millions  in  the  streets  to-day  have  testified.  The  clouds  may 
lower  and  the  tempest  might  break  upon  them,  but  they 
defied  the  elements  to  do  their  worst ;  these  could  not 
dampen  their  ardor  nor  chill  the  enthusiasm  with  which  they 


l84  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

waited  to  see  and  cheer  the  President  of  the  United  States 
and  General  Grant  at  the  head  of  the  procession  ;  the  Presi- 
dent as  worthily  representing  the  majesty  of  that  country 
which  they  love,  and  General  Grant  as  the  living  champion  of 
the  struggles  that  have  maintained  it.      [Applause.] 

Although  Yorktown  two  years  before  had  ended  the  great 
battles  of  the  war,  although  the  preliminary  treaty  had  been 
signed  a  year  before,  and  its  final  exchange  in  September, 
1783,  had  formally  introduced  the  thirteen  colonies  to  the 
world  as  free,  sovereign  and  independent,  yet  as  long  as  New 
York,  the  great  seaport  of  the  country,  remained  in  the  hands 
of  the  enemy,  the  fruits  of  the  treaty  and  of  the  peace  were 
not  realized  ;  and  their  final  departure  on  the  twenty-fifth 
of  November,  1783,  was  a  signal  demonstration  to  the  people 
that  peace  at  last  had  really  returned  and  that  the  inde- 
pendence for  which  they  had  been  struggling  and  suffering 
for  so  many  years  was  at  last  actually  achieved.  [Applause.] 
In  April,  1775,  Joseph  Warren  had  written  :  "  America  must 
and  will  be  free.  The  contest  may  be  severe  but  the  end 
will  be  glorious."  He  sealed  the  words  with  his  blood,  and 
took  his  place  as  the  first  great  martyr  of  the  great  cause. 
And  now  the  people  saw  that  the  contest,  severer  far  than 
Warren  ev^er  dreamed  of,  was  over,  and  that  the  end  all 
glorious  as  he  hoped  had  come.  [Applause.]  Of  all  the 
thirteen  States,  New  York  in  the  struggles  and  sacrifices  of 
the  war  had  suffered  incomparably  more  than  any  of  the  rest. 
Its  soil  had  been  overrun  and  occupied  in  succession  by  both 
armies ;  its  rich  capital  had  been  seized  and  made  for  six 
long  years  the  base  of  British  operations ;  the  people  had 
been  driven  from  their  homes  and  their  property  despoiled 
and  destroyed.  From  the  beginning  the  British  IMinistry 
had  made  the  most  desperate  efforts  to  debauch  them  from 
their  loyalty  to  their  brethren  of  the  other  colonies.  The 
Royal  Council  and  a  Tory  Legislature  had  refused  to  rep- 
resent them  in  the  Congress,  but  the  outraged  people  took 
their  own  affairs  into  their  own  hands,  and,  thanks  to  a  free 
press  that  could  neither  be  muzzled  nor  bought  and  to  such 
men  as  Jay  and  Hamilton  and  Clinton,  names  never  to  be 
forgotten  on  days  like  this,  they  linked  their  fortunes  indis- 
solubly  to  those  of  the  other  colonies.  The  great  majority 
of  the  people  of  the  colony  were  true  to  themselves  and  their 


BRITISH    EVACUATION    OF    NEW   YORK  1 85 

country  ;  another  disproof  of  the  fallacy  which  the  great 
EngHsh  critic  [Matthew  Arnold]  is  now  preaching  among 
us,  and  to  which  I  believe  our  friend  Governor  ]^utler  has 
recently  become  a  reluctant  convert,  that  majorities  are  in 
the  wrong.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

On  every  field  of  victory  or  defeat  the  sons  of  New  York 
stood  or  fell  with  the  rest  ;  but  their  beautiful  city,  never- 
theless, the  pride  of  the  whole  province  and  country  had 
been  blasted  by  the  ravages  of  war.  Fire  had  destroyed  its 
fairest  portion  ;  its  people  had  been  driven  from  theii* 
homes;  its  population  reduced  one-lialf  and  the  remnant 
had  been  handed  over  to  foreign  soldiers  and  Tory  refugees. 
And  now  the  day  of  their  deliverance  had  come,  and  their 
homes  in  ashes  and  in  ruin,  as  the  city  was  about  to  be 
surrendered  to  its  loyal  and  long-sufTering  sons.  The  scene 
which  this  day  commemorates  summed  up,  as  it  ended,  the 
whole  history  of  the  war.  You  remember  what  Lord 
Chatham  said,  probably  every  member  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  used  to  speak  it  at  school :  "  If  I  were  an  Amer- 
ican, as  I  am  an  Englishman,  while  a  single  foreign  soldier 
remained  in  my  country,  I  would  never  lay  down  my  arms." 
[Applause.]  Now,  America  had  been  true  to  that  cheering 
word,  and  at  last,  at  last,  the  saving  hour  had  come.  Of  the 
departing  troops  nearly  one-half  were  foreign  mercenaries ; 
a  signal  proof  that  the  war  from  the  beginning  to  the  end 
was  a  war  of  the  King  and  the  Ministry  and  not  of  the 
people  [applause],  and  that  Chatham  and  Burke  and  Con- 
way and  their  great  associates,  friends  of  America,  had  large 
backing  behind  them  in  the  hearts  of  the  English  people 
when  they  declared  that  the  liberties  of  England  no  less 
than  those  of  America  were  staked  upon  our  success. 
Throughout  the  war  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  the 
Ministry  could  not  find  Englishmen  enough  to  fill  up  the 
army,  but  had  to  depend  upon  German  mercenaries,  hired 
at  so  much  a  head  from  petty  princes  to  do  their  distasteful 
and  hopeless  work.     [Applause.] 

Who  can  conceive,  then,  with  what  infinite  exultation  and 
pride  the  returning  citizens  of  New  York  on  that  glorious 
day  saw  the  last  of  these  foreign  invaders  and  hirelings 
depart  from  these  shores  which  their  hostile  feet  had  so  long 
desecr9,ted   and   profaned  ?    Who  can  imagine  with  what 


l86  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

gratitude  and  love  they  turned  on  the  afternoon  of  the  same 
day  to  greet  the  battered  remnant  of  the  Continental  army 
bearing  the  flags  that  had  triumphed  at  Lexington,  at  Bunker 
Hill,  at  Saratoga,  and  at  Yorktown  ? — those  veterans  whose 
bronzed  and  scarred  faces  told  the  whole  story  of  the  war? 
And  who  above  all  can  realize  with  what  boundless  enthu- 
siasm and  adoration  they  hastened  to  welcome  Washington 
— Washington  whose  great  soul  had  been  the  beacon-light 
that  had  led  all  America  on  its  way  to  liberty,  from  that 
far-distant  day  when  he  first  unsheathed  the  sword  under 
the  old  elm  tree  at  Cambridge  until  now  that  the  great  goal 
was  reached?  [Applause,]  He  came  not  in  uniform  ;  he 
came  not  at  the  head  of  the  army,  but  leading  a  civic  pro- 
cession in  the  plain  clothes  of  a  citizen,  in  token  that  there 
was  no  more  war,  no  more  need  of  the  soldier  or  of  the 
general  ;  and  after  seeing  the  last  foot  of  American  soil 
purged  from  the  presence  of  the  invader  he  was  about  to 
bid  a  last  farewell  to  his  companions  in  arms,  and  hasten  to 
Annapolis  to  lay  down  his  sword  and  his  commission  at  the 
feet  of  that  Congress  from  whom  eight  years  before  he  had 
received  it.  [Cheers.]  And  Washington  came  not  alone. 
By  his  side  there  marched  another  hero,  whose  name  no 
native  or  adopted  citizen  of  New  York  can  fail  to  recall 
whenever  her  part  in  the  Revolution  is  remembered — hei 
great  war  governor,  George  Clinton  [cheers]— whose  grate- 
ful task  it  was  on  that  day  to  represent  the  sovereignty  of 
the  State  of  New  York  over  its  recovered  capital. 

Very  well  then  and  truthfully  may  we  say,  as  the  toast 
says,  that  this  day  we  celebrate  was  the  "  second  birthday" 
of  the  city  in  which  we  live.  All  its  bright  destiny  dates 
from  that  happy  hour  of  triumph.  Its  mighty  commerce, 
its  boundless  wealth,  its  vast  population,  its  majestic  pro- 
portions— all  trace  their  origin  to  the  day  we  celebrate.  It 
is  not  for  me,  gentlemen,  to  relate  its  subsequent  progress. 
"  Then  and  Now,"  has  been  reserved  upon  your  programme 
for  wiser  and  more  eloquent  lips  than  mine.  But  I  may  say 
in  conclusion  that  if  wealth  and  numbers  are  the  end  of 
civilization.  New  York  may  rest  content ;  but  if,  as  Mr. 
Arnold  declares,  and  as  every  man  in  his  senses  must  agree, 
these,  great  as  they  are,  are  but  the  means  for  higher  ends, 
then  New  York  has  but  just  begun  the  great  work  that  lies 


SONS   AND   GUESTS   OF   OLD    HARVARD  1 87 

ready  for  her  hands  to  do,  and  has  thus  far  only  been  laying 
the  foundation  of  her  future  greatness.  I  do  not  know,  Mr. 
President,  how  the  committee  who  had  the  banquet  in 
charge  could  have  better  decorated  these  walls  for  this  occa- 
sion than  by  hanging  upon  them  these  striking  portraits  of 
George  Washington  and  George  Clinton,  as  now  they  appear 
before  you,  standing  side  by  side,  so  on  that  great  day  they 
rode  into  the  city,  one  representing  the  State  of  New  York 
and  the  other  the  imperial  majesty  of  the  United  Colonies, 
soon  destined  to  become  the  United  States  of  America. 
[Applause.]  As  they  look  down  upon  this  festival  in  their 
honor,  upon  these  citizens  and  the  great  city  which  has 
shared  in  such  rich  measure  the  fruits  of  their  joint  labors 
and  sacrifices,  upon  this  scene  so  fitly  graced  by  the  presence 
of  the  President  of  the  Republic,  which  they  did  so  much 
to  found,  and  by  the  presence  of  so  many  of  the  Governors 
of  the  old  thirteen  States  which  they  welded  into  one — 
could  these  dignified  and  majestic  lips  but  speak,  how  fer- 
vently would  they  thank  God  for  permitting  them  to  labor 
and  to  suffer  for  such  results,  and  how  urgently  would  they 
exhort  us  to  hand  down  untarnished  and  unbroken  to  pos- 
terity the  liberty  and  the  union  which  they  so  stoutly  fought 
for  and  maintained.     [Applause.] 


SONS  AND  GUESTS  OF  OLD  HARVARD 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate,  as  presiding  officer  at  the  Harvard 
Alumni  dinner,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  June  24,  1885.] 

Brethren  of  the  Alumni  : — Now  that  you  have  ban- 
queted upon  these  more  substantial  dainties  which  the  Del- 
monico  of  Harvard  has  provided  [laughter],  I  invite  you 
to  partake  of  the  more  delicate  diet  of  tongues  and  sounds 
[laughter] — the  favorite  dish  of  every  Harvard  dinner — 
where,  of  course,  every  alumnus  expects  to  get  his  deserts. 
We  have  assembled  for  the  two  hundred  and  forty-ninth 
time  to  pay  our  vows  at  the  shrine  of  our  Alma  Mater,  to 
revel  in  the  delights  of  mutual  admiration,  and  to  welcome  to 
the  commencement  of  actual  life  175  new  brethren  that  our 


1 88  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

mother  has  brought  forth  to-day.  [Laughter.]  Gentlemen, 
it  is  your  great  misfortune,  that  I  have  been  called  upon,  on 
two  occasions,  to  stand  here  in  the  place  of  the  president 
of  your  choice,  and  to  fill  the  shoes  of  a  better  man,  and  if  I 
shuffle  awkwardly  along  in  them,  you  will  remember  that 
they  are  several  sizes  too  large  for  me,  and  with  higher  heels 
than  I  am  accustomed  to  wear.  [Laughter.]  On  a  former 
occasion,  in  view  of  the  incompatibility  of  sentiment  among 
high  authorities  [laughter],  I  did  what  I  might  to  stem  the 
tide  of  a  seemingly  irrepressible  conflict,  and,  by  your  coun- 
sel and  aid,  with  apparent  success.  [Applause.]  "  Grim 
visaged  war"  did  smooth  "  his  wrinkled  front  "  [laughter], 
and  peace  and  harmony  prevailed  wdiere  blood  had  threat- 
ened. 

But  how,  gentlemen,  can  I  hope  to  fill  your  just  expec- 
tations to-day,  when  you  have  justly  counted  upon  the  most 
popular  of  all  j'our  divines  and  the  most  fervent  of  all  your 
orators,  who  should  now  be  leading  your  council  here  ?  But 
Phillips  Brooks,  having  long  ago  mastered  all  hearts  at 
home,  has  gone  abroad  in  search  of  new  conquests.  [Ap- 
plause.] When  last  heard  from  he  was  doing  well  in  very 
kindred  co/inpany  ;  for  he  was  breakfasting  with  Gladstone, 
the  statesman  whose  defeat  is  his  mightiest  victory  [ap- 
plause] ;  the  scholar  and  the  orator,  who  would  exchange  for 
no  title  in  the  royal  gift  the  lustre  of  his  own  great  name.  [Ap- 
plause.] But,  gentlemen,  I  have  no  fears  for  the  success 
of  this  occasion,  notwithstanding  the  absence  we  deplore, 
when  I  look  around  these  tables  and  see  who  still  are  here. 
In  the  first  place,  you  are  all  here.  [Laughter  and  applause.] 
And  when  the  sons  of  Harvard  are  all  together,  basking  in 
the  sunshine  of  each  other's  countenances,  what  need  is 
there  for  the  sun  to  shine  ?  And,  then,  President  Eliot  is  here. 
[Applause.]  I  remember  that  sixteen  years  ago,  we  gave 
him  his  first  welcome  to  the  seat  where  Ouincy,  Everett, 
Sparks  and  Felton  and  Walker  had  sat  before  him  ;  and, 
to-day,  in  your  names,  I  may  thank  him  that  he  has  more 
than  redeemed  the  pride  and  promise  of  the  earlier  days. 
While  it  cannot  exactly  be  said  that  he  found  Harvard  of 
brick  and  left  it  marble,  it  can  truly  be  said  that  he  found 
it  a  college  and  has  already  made  it  a  university  [applause]  ; 
and  let  us  all  hope  that  his  faithful  reign  over   us  may  con- 


SONS   AND    GUESTS   OF    OLD    HARVARD  1 89 

tinue  aslon^ashe  has  the  strength  and  the  courage  to  carry 
on  the  good  work  that  he  has  in  hand.  And,  then,  the 
governor  of  the  Commonwealth  is  here  [apphiusc],  always  a 
most  honored  guest  among  the  alumni  of  Harvard.  [Ap- 
plause.] Governor  Winthrop  attended  the  first  commence- 
ment in  1642;  and  I  believe  that  since  that  time  there  has 
never  been  any  exception  to  the  presence  of  the  chief  mag- 
istrate. 

Then,  gentlemen,  wc  are  honored  with  the  presence  of 
the  Vice-Presidentof  the  United  States.*  [Applause.]  And 
now  that  Harvard  has  assumed  such  national  proportions, 
what  could  be  more  fit  than  that  we  should  welcome  to  our 
board  one  of  the  chief  representatives  of  the  national  govern- 
ment? He  comes  to  us,  gentlemen,  fresh  from  Yale  [laugh- 
ter], and  if  we  may  believe  the  morning  papers — a  very 
large  if,  I  admit — if  we  may  believe  those  veracious  jour- 
nals, the  eminent  Vice-President  yesterday  at  New  Haven 
gave  utterance  to  two  brief  and  pithy  sentiments,  one  of 
which  we  shall  accept,  with  absolute,  unqualified  applause, 
and  the  other  of  which  we  must  swallow,  if  at  all,  with  a 
modification.  "  Yale,"  said  he,  in  short  and  sententious 
words — which  are  the  essence  of  great  men  and  which  we 
are  all  so  fond  of  hearing  and  reporting — "  Yale,"  said  he, 
"is  everywhere."  Gentlemen,  I  would  say  with  this  mod- 
ification: Yes,  Yale  is  everywhere,  but  she  always  finds 
Harvard  there  before  her.  [Applause.]  Gentlemen,  the 
rudeness  of  your  manner  broke  off  my  sentence.  [Laugh- 
ter.] She  always  finds  Harvard  there  before  her,  or  close 
alongside  or  very  close  in  her  rear ;  and  let  us  hope  that  her 
boys  at  New  London  will  demonstrate  the  truth  of  that  to- 
morrow. [Applause.]  The  other  sentiment  that  he  uttered, 
gentlemen,  and  that  needs  no  qualification,  is  that  pub- 
lic oflfice  is  a  public  trust.  [Applause.]  Gentlemen,  in  say- 
ing that,  he  stole  Harvard  thunder.  That  has  been  her  doc- 
trine since  the  days  of  John  Adams ;  and  I  am  sure  that 
you  will  be  perfectly  delighted  to  hear  from  this  eminent 
man  that  old  doctrine  of  ours  reinforced. 

But,  gentlemen,  better  than  all  the  rest,  once  more  at 
home   in  his   old  place  among  us  again,  is   James   Russell 

*  Thomas  Andrew  Hendricks. 


190  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

Lowell.  [Applause.  All  rose  for  three  cheers  and  nins 
"  rahs."]  Eight  years  ago,  gentlemen,  he  left  us  for  the 
public  service.  Men  who  did  not  know  him  wondered  how 
poetry  and  diplomacy  would  work  together;  poetry,  the 
science  of  all  truth,  and  diplomacy  that  is  thought  some- 
times to  be  not  quite  so  true.  Well,  if  you  will  allow  me, 
I  will  explain  his  triumphs  abroad  by  a  wise  saying  of 
Goethe's,  the  fitness  of  which,  I  think,  you  will  recognize. 
"  Poetry,"  he  says,  *'  belongs  not  to  the  noble  nor  to  the 
people,  neither  to  king  nor  to  peasant ;  it  is  the  offspring  of 
a  true  man."  Gentlemen,  it  is  not  because  of  the  laurels 
that  were  heaped  upon  him  abroad,  not  because  he  com- 
manded new  honor  for  the  American  scholar  and  the  Amer- 
ican people,  and  not  because  his  name  will  henceforth  be  a 
new  bond  of  union  between  the  two  countries;  but  we 
learned  to  love  him  before  he  went  away,  because  we  knew 
that,  from  the  beginning,  he  had  been  the  fearless  champion 
of  truth  and  of  freedom,  and,  during  every  year  of  his  ab- 
sence, we  have  loved  him  the  more.  And  so,  in  your 
names,  I  bid  him  a  cordial  welcome  home  again.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

You  will  also  be  pleased  to  hear  that  Dr.  Holmes  [ap- 
plause] has  been  inspired  by  this  interesting  feature  of  the 
occasion  to  mount  his  Pegasus  once  more  and  ride  out  to 
Cambridge  upon  his  back  ;  and  soon  you  will  hear  him 
strike  his  lyre  once  more  in  praise  of  his  younger  brother. 
[Applause.]  But,  gentlemen,  these  are  not  all  the  treasures 
that  are  in  store  for  you.  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  after 
twenty-five  years  of  continuous  service  on  the  Board  of 
Overseers,  from  which  he  now  retires,  by  the  strength  of  the 
constitution,  will  tell  you  frankly  what  he  thinks  about  you 
and  about  them.  And  then,  to  the  class  of  1835  the  crown- 
ing honors  of  this  day  belong,  and  I  am  pleased  to  say  that 
their  chosen  spokesman,  although  pretending  to  be  for  the 
moment  an  invalid — he  wrote  to  me  that  he  was  no  better 
than  he  should  be  [laughter] — he  is  here  to  speak  for  them. 
For  us  who  have  been  coming  up  to  Cambridge  for  the  last 
thirty  years,  I  would  like  to  know  what  a  Harvard  Com- 
mencement without  Judge  Hoar  would  be?  Who  can 
forget  the  quips  and  cranks  and  wanton  wiles  with  which  he 
has  beguiled  many  an  hour  that  promised   to  be  dull  ;  and 


SONS    AND    GUESTS   OF    OLD    HARVARD  IQI 

how  he  has,  I  will  not  say  blighted,  but  dimmed,  some  of 
our  lighter  moments  by  words  of  wisdom  and  power.  So 
in  your  name  I  say  :  "  Long  life  and  a  green  old  age  to 
Judge  Hoar  and  all  the  members  of  the  class  of  1835." 

Then,  gentlemen,  all  these  new  doctors  of  the  law  :  why, 
Harvard,  returning  to  an  ancient  custom,  has  been  graduating 
them  out  of  her  own  sons,  and  to-day  it  may  truly  be  said 
that  the  university  has  been  growing  rich  and  strong  by 
degrees.  [Laughter.]  You  will  be  glad  to  hear  all  of  them 
speak  for  themselves.  Of  one  of  them.  Dr.  Carter,  I  will 
say,  from  intimate  knowledge,  that  he  leads  us  gallantly  at 
the  bar  of  New  York,  and  all  his  associates  rejoice  in  his 
leadership.  He  has  recently  rendered  a  signal  service  to  the 
jurisprudence  of  that  great  State  by  contributing  more  than 
any  other  man  to  the  defeat  of  a  code  which  threatened  to 
involve  all  the  settled  law  of  the  community  in  confusion 
and  contempt. 

Well,  gentlemen,  as  I  have  told  you  who  are  to  speak  to 
you,  I  should  sit  down.  I  believe,  however,  it  is  usual  for 
the  presiding  officer  to  recall  any  startling  events  in  the 
history  of  the  college.  Gentlemen,  there  have  been  none. 
The  petition  of  the  undergraduates  for  what  they  called  a 
fuller  civil  and  religious  liberty,  in  being  relieved  from  com- 
pulsory attendance  on  morning  prayers,  was  happily  denied. 
The  answer  of  the  overseers  was  well-conceived — that,  in 
obedience  to  the  settled  rules  and  regulations  of  the  college, 
of  which  that  was  one,  they  would  find  an  all-sufficient 
liberty.  That  idea  was  not  original  with  them  ;  they  bor- 
rowed it  from  Mr.  Lowell,  when  he  said  and  sung  in  his 
sonnet  upon  the  reformers  : — 

Who  yet  have  not  the  one  great  lesson  learned 

That  grows  in  leavcN, 

Tides  in  the  mighty  seas, 
And  in  the  stars  eternally  hath  burned, 

That  only  full  obedience  is  free. 

The  only  other  incident  in  the  history  of  the  year  is  the 
successful  effort  that  has  been  made  in  digging  out  the  his- 
tory of  John  Harvard  ;  and  about  that,  the  President  of  the 
college  will  tell  you  in  good  time — who  he  was,  whence  he 
came,  and  where  he  got  the  fortune  and  the  library  which  he 


192  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

contributed,  along  with  his  melodious  name,  to  the  college. 
He  gave  half  of  all  he  had,  gentlemen,  and  out  of  that 
modest  fountain  what  vast  results  have  flowed  !  May  no 
red-handed  vandal  of  an  undergraduate  ever  desecrate  his 
statue  that  stands  at  the  head  of  the  park.  [Applause.] 
Now,  brethren,  w'ould  you  have  your  statue  crowned  ? 
Would  you,  too,  become  immortal  }  Would  you  identify 
your  homes  with  the  glory  of  the  college  ?  The  way  is  open 
and  easy.  Follow  exactly  the  example  of  the  founder ; 
give  one  equal  half  of  all  5^ou  are  worth  to  the  college,  and 
if  you  wish  to  enjoy  your  own  immortality,  do  it  to-morrow, 
while  you  are  alive.  [Applause  and  laughter.]  If  you 
shrink  from  that,  die  at  once  and  give  it  to  them.  [Laugh- 
ter.] Other  people,  possibly,  will  rise  up  and  call  you 
blessed,  whatever  your  own  may  do  [laughter]  ;  so  you  will 
relieve  the  President  of  more  than  half  the  labors  of  his 
ofifice. 

Gentlemen,  I  did  want  to  say  a  word  about  another  mat- 
ter, the  elective  system,  but  President  Eliot  tells  me  I  had 
better  not.  He  says  that  the  Board  of  Overseers  of  the  col- 
lege  are  incubating  on  that  question,  and  that  there  is  no 
telling  what  they  may  hatch  out.  Now  don't  let  us  disturb 
them,  gentlemen  ;  at  any  rate,  while  they  are  on  the  nest  ; 
we  might  crack  the  shell,  and  then  the  whole  work  would 
have  to  be  done  over  again.  And  so,  gentlemen,  as  you 
now  seem  to  be  in  good  mood,  let  me  say  one  word  more 
about  this  elective  system.  I  don't  care  how  they  settle  it  ; 
I  hope  they  will  give  us  the  means  of  sustaining  and  forti- 
fying their  decision  when  they  make  it.  We  alumni  at  a 
distance  from  the  college  are  often  stung  to  indignation  by 
the  attacks  that  are  made  upon  us  by  the  representatives 
of  other  colleges.  One  would  think,  by  the  way  they  talk 
down  there  at  Princeton,  that  Harvard  was  going  to  the 
everlasting  bow-wows  ;  that  the  fountains  of  learning  were 
being  undermined  and  broken  up  ;  that,  as  Mr.  Lowell  said 
again  : — 

"The  Auglo-Saxondom's  idee's  abreakin'  'em  to  pieces, 
An'  thet  idee's  thet  every  man  doos  jest  wut  he  damn  jjleases." 

I  suppose  that  the  truth  about  the  elective  system  is  that 
the  world  moves  on  and  the  college  moves  with  it.     In  Cot- 


TRIBUTE    TO   GENERAL    MILES  193 

ton  Mather's  time,  when  he  said  that  the  sole  object  of  the 
foundation  of  a  college  was  to  furnish  a  good  supply  of 
godly  ministers  for  the  provinces,  it  was  well  enough  to 
feed  them  on  Latin  and  Greek  only.  Now  that  young  men 
when  they  go  out  into  the  world  have  everything  to  do 
about  taking  part  in  all  the  activities  of  life,  I  for  one  say 
let  them  have  the  chance  to  learn  here  anything  they  can 
possibly  want  to  learn.  [Applause.]  And  I  hope  that  our 
President  will  persevere  in  one  direction,  at  least  until  he  can 
say  truly  that  whatever  is  worth  learning  can  be  taught  well 
at  Ilarvard.  This  is  well  expressed  again  in  an  idea  of  Mr. 
Lowell's,  who  always  has  ideas  enough,  if  divided,  to  go 
around  even  among  us  : — 

"  New  occasions  teach  new  duties  ;  Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth  ; 
They  mast  upward  still,  and  onward,  who  would  keep  abreast  of  truth." 

Gentlemen,  let  me  say  a  single  word  before  I  sit  down. 
I  hope  you  will  be  very  patient  with  all  the  other  speakers. 
I  advise  them,  as  the  hour  is  late  and  the  afternoon  is  short 
and  there  arc  a  great  many  of  them  in  number,  each  to  put 
a  good  deal  of  shortening  in  his  cake.  That  is  a  rule  that 
never  is  applied  to  the  presiding  officer,  and  I  am  afraid 
that  it  never  will  be. 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  give  you  the  health  of  President  Eliot ; 
long  life  to  him.     [Applause.] 


TRIBUTE  TO  GENERAL  MILES 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate,  as  presiding  oiEcer  at  a  dinner  given, 
November  11,  1S98,  in  honor  of  Major-General  Nelson  A.  Miles,  by  more 
than  seven  hundred  of  the  most  distinguished  citizens  of  New  York. 
Mr.  Choate  read  a  letter  from  President  McKinley,  who  said  that 
although  his  engagements  prevented  his  presence,  he  desired  to  express 
his  hearty  congratulations  to  the  general  commanding  the  United  States 
Army.] 

O  ye  gods,  and  [with  a  glance  at  the  boxes]  goddesses 
[laughter]  !  we  have  not  come  hereto  talk  our  distinguished 
friend  to  death,  but  to  express  our  admiration  for  his  lofty 
character  [cheers] ;  our  appreciation  for  his  splendid  career, 
and  our  gratitude  for  the  magnificent  services  he  has  ren. 


194  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

dercd  to  his  country.  [Prolonged  cheers.]  But  he  would 
not  forgive  me  if  I  omitted  to  mention  the  name  that  is 
ever  first  in  our  hearts,  the  name  of  President  McKinley.  [At 
the  mention  of  the  President's  name,  every  guest  arose  and 
stood  until  the  cheering  ceased.]  It  is  fitting  at  this  time  to 
mention  a  few  things  that  have  recently  taken  place.  First, 
the  credit  and  good  faith  of  the  country  have  been  placed 
on  an  imperishable  basis  of  pure  gold;  second,  a  general 
and  reasonable  prosperity  has  come  to  the  whole  people  of 
the  United  States  to  stay  ;  third,  the  last  vestige  of  Span- 
ish power  has  been  driven  from  the  last  foot  of  American 
soil  [great  cheering]  ;  and  so  a  debt  that  America  has  owed 
humanity  for  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  fully  paid.  Last- 
ly, the  name  and  fame  of  America  have  been  advanced 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth  so  that  all  pay  to  her  re- 
spect, deference  and  a  wholesome  apprehension  never  given 
her  before. 

But  this  is  no  political  occasion.  When  my  eyes  rest  on 
Colonel  Roosevelt  [here  cheering  broke  out  again  and  lasted 
for  a  full  minute],  I,  for  one,  desire  to  say  that  I  have 
had  enough  of  politics,  and  I  want  to  hear  no  more  of  them 
for  two  years  to  come.  [Laughter  and  cheers.]  We  are 
assembled  here  to  extend  a  welcome  to  one  of  the  greatest 
soldiers  of  America,  whom  we  all  admire.  Did  we  not  see 
him  marching  down  Broadway  in  1861  as  a  lieutenant  of 
the  twenty-second  Massachusetts  volunteers  ?  Did  we  not 
learn  of  his  rapid  promotion  to  be  lieutenant-colonel  of  the 
sixty-first  New  York  volunteers?  Has  he  not  been  in  com- 
mand of  thirty-two  regiments  of  New  York  soldiers  when 
he  was  commander  of  an  army  corps  ?  Why  should  not 
New  Yorkers  admire  him?  Have  we  forgotten  Fredericks- 
burg, Chancellorsville,  Spottsylvania,  where  he  imperilled  his 
life  and  won  immortal  fame  ?  He  is  identified  more  than 
any  other  soldier  with  the  volunteers  of  the  country.  And 
were  there  many  Indian  campaigns  in  the  last  thirty  years 
in  which  he  was  not  engaged  ?  And  in  this  last  war  he  has 
rendered  such  infinite  services  as  only  a  master  of  the  art  of 
war  could  render.  The  Government  has  availed  itself  of 
his  counsel,  his  courage,  his  loyalty,  and  his  undying  alle- 
giance. Am  I  making  any  mistake  in  saying  that  when  he 
sailed  for  Cuba  everybody   knew  that    safety  and  courage 


PEACE    BETWEEN    NATIONS  IQ5 

and  wisdom  went  with  him,  and  that  when  he  appeared  upon 
the  soil  of  Cuba  the  heart  of  every  officer  and  soldier 
upon  that  soil  was  cheered  ?  What  of  that  last  and  blood- 
less Porto  Rican  campaign?  He  was  sent  to  conquer,  and 
was  received  with  open  arms  as  a  deliverer  instead  of  a  con- 
queror. He  had  to  send  for  a  vast  supply  of  American 
flags  instead  of  for  more  ammunition  and  troops.  [Great 
cheers.]  [In  conclusion,  Mr.  Choate  called  on  the  guests  to 
drink  the  health  of  General  Miles,  which  was  done  standing 
and  amid  cheers  that  did  not  cease  entirely  until  after  two 
or  three  of  General  Miles'  old  comrades  had  called  for"  three 
more."] 


PEACE  BETWEEN  NATIONS 

[Speech  of  Joseph  H.  Choate,  at  a  banquet  given  in  his  honor  by  the 
Associated  Chambers  of  Commerce,  London,  March  15,  1899.  The  Pres- 
ident, Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  was  in  the  chair.  The  toast,  "  Our  Guests," 
to  which  Mr.  Choate  responded,  was  proposed  by  G.  T.  Harper.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen: — In  the  first  place 
let  me  protest  against  the  unequalled  manner  in  which 
the  response  to  this  toast  has  been  assigned.  That  I,  a 
total  stranger  among  you,  should  have  been  called  upon 
to  respond  to  it  in  priority  to  the  Lord  Chief  Justice 
of  England — at  whose  feet  I  have  sat,  at  a  great  distance  ofT 
[laughter],  and  whose  example  I  have  vainly  tried  to  follow — 
that  1  should  have  been  called  upon  to  speak  before  him 
overwhelms  me  with  embarrassment.  Then  another  thing 
I  would  have  you  understand,  which  is  that  I  feel  that  when 
the  British  lion  is  about  to  roar,  even  the  American  eagle 
should  hold  his  peace.  [Cheers  and  laughter.]  Wlien  I 
received,  before  I  left  America,  a  very  kind  note  from  Sir 
Stafford  Northcote,  inviting  m.e  to  attend  this  banquet  of  the 
Associated  Chambers  of  Commerce  of  England — realizing  as 
I  did  that  this  company  \vould  embody  the  whole  might  of 
the  commerce  of  Great  Britain  [cheers],  I  felt  that  I  ought 
to  accept  it  in  the  same  cordial  spirit  in  which  it  was  given. 
[Cheers.]  To  be  sure,  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  discuss  British 
commerce  ;  my  general  instructions  from  my  Government 


196  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

are  not  to  speak  about  political  questions,  and  only  on  ex- 
traordinarily festal  occasions.  [Laughter.]  I  am  sure  that 
your  manifestations  bring  this  occasion  within  the  latter 
clause.  [Laughter.]  I  was  assured  by  my  President  that 
this  Association  in  all  its  doings  was  absolutely  non-political. 

I  have  read  one  or  two  of  your  publications — not  all 
through  [laughter] — I  take  the  liberty  to  skip  the  figures, 
statistics,  and  most  of  the  speeches  [laughter] — but  I  read 
what  Lord  Salisbury  said  to  you  two  years  ago,  that  the  first 
duty  of  the  Government  for  which  he  then  spoke — was  the 
maintenance  of  British  interests  and  of  British  obligations  ; 
and  what  is  there  in  that  which  commerce  does  not  embrace  ? 
Truly  commerce  is  the  main  stay  of  the  British  Empire,  and 
I  was  glad  to  hear  from  the  rear-admiral  that  the  sole  ob- 
ject of  maintaining  your  splendid  fleets  and  splendid  armies 
is  to  preserve  peace  for  the  encouragement  of  commerce. 
[Cheers.]  But  I  felt  that,  anyway,  I  might  properly  and 
with  all  modesty  avail  myself  of  this  occasion — the  first 
public  occasion  to  which  I  was  invited  on  my  arrival* — of 
expressing  the  appreciation  of  my  country  men,  of  the  for- 
bearance, the  good-will  and  the  friendship  which  have  been 
manifested  to  them  so  freely  by  the  people  of  this  country. 
[Cheers.]  It  is  true  that  peace  between  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain  is  the  first  interest,  not  only  of  these  two 
nations,  but  of  the  rest  of  the  world  together.  [Cheers.] 
I  have  to  express  my  gratitude  for  the  cordial  greeting 
which  I  have  received  since  my  landing,  from  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men.  ["  Hear  !  Hear  !  "]  Everywhere  I  have 
been  treated  as  a  friend  and  brother  and  as  a  representative 
of  your  friends  and  brothers.     [Cheers.] 

I  find  that  England  never  fails  to  practise  what  she 
preaches;  and  this  open  door  I  have  found  was  broadly  open 
in  such  a  way  and  to  such  an  extent  as  would  satisfy,  I  have 
no  doubt,  the  yearnings  even  of  the  rear-admiral  who  has 
swung  the  circuit  of  the  globe  to  find  it.  [Cheers  and  laugh- 
ter.] I  have  read  carefully  the  speeches  which  he  made  in 
the  various  hemispheres  which  he  has  visited  [laughter],  and 
I  find  that  he  is  a  good  deal  troubled,  not  about  the  open 
door  but  about  the  people  inside  and  behind  the  open  door. 

*  To  fill  the  ofEce  of  American  Ambassador  to  Great  Britain. 


PEACE    BETWEEN    NATIONS  1 97 

He  has  said  many  times  that  there  is  no  such  great  difficulty 
in  getting  or  holding  the  door  open  as  there  is  in  managing 
the  people  inside  the  door,  who,  as  he  has  often  said,  have 
really  no  capacity  to  take  care  of  themselves  [laughter]  ;  but 
I  have  found,  so  far  as  my  observation  and  experience  go — 
extending  over  only  two  weeks  [laughter] — that  the  people 
inside  or  behind  the  door  which  has  been  thrown  open  to 
him  are  not  only  capable  of  taking  care  of  themselves  but 
of  nearly  all  the  rest  of  mankind  together.  [Laughter.]  I 
think  I  may  say,  as  testimony  and  as  witness  of  the  good 
feeling  which  is  sought  to  be  encouraged  on  our  side  of  the 
water,  that  the  President  gave,  as  I  thought,  the  best  illus- 
tration of  it  when  he  said  in  my  letter  of  credence  that  he 
relied  with  confidence  upon  my  constant  endeavor  during 
my  stay  in  this  country,  to  promote  the  interests  and  pros- 
perity of  both  nations.  [Cheers.]  And  then  I  want  to  take 
issue  with  Lord  Charles  Beresford  on  one  further  point,  and 
that  is  that  I  have  found  not  only  the  open  door,  but  that  I  am 
able  to  combine  with  it  a  new  and  enlarged  sphere  of  influ- 
ence ["  Hear !  Hear  !  "  and  laughter] — a  sphere  of  influence 
in  this  era  of  good  feeling  peculiarly  open  to  the  American 
people  and  its  representatives  ;  for  in  this  cordial  and  over- 
flowing demonstration  of  brotherhood  which  greets  me, 
what  is  there  that  either  of  us  could  ask  from  the  other, 
that  we  should  ask  amiss?  [Loud  cheers.]  I  beg  you  not 
to  mistake  my  meaning  in  what  I  have  said.  I  do  not 
believe  that  although  friends  we  shall  ever  cease  to  be  rivals 
in  the  future  as  we  have  been  in  the  past.  ["Hear  !  hear  !  "] 
We  on  our  part  and  you  on  yours  will  still  press  every  ad' 
vantage  that  we  can  fairly  take,  but  it  shall  be  a  generous 
and  a  loyal  rivalry,  and  all  questions,  disputes,  controversies 
that  may  arise — may  we  not  all  say  so,  shall  be  settled  b)'- 
peaceful  means  [cheers],  by  negotiation,  by  arbitration,  by 
any  possible  and  every  possible  means,  except  that  of  war. 
[Loud  cheers.]  I  want  to  say  one  word  more  about  this 
state  of  good  feeling  that  prevails  among  us,  and  of  which 
we  are  all  so  proud.  It  is  not  new  sentiment  ;  it  is  as  old 
almost  as  the  existence  of  the  Republic.  It  is  now  84  years 
since  the  last  armed  conflict  between  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  came  to  an  end,  and  any  of  you  present  who 
are  old  enough  to  remember  that   [laughter]  will  recall  that 


198  JOi^KPH    HODGES  CHOATE 

that  conflict  of  three  years  ended  by  a  sort  of  peterlng-out 
process,  and  that  no  question  upon  which  either  side  had 
taken  up  arms  was  settled  by  means  of  war  ;  showing  that 
between  brothers  war  is  the  worst  possible  means  of  set- 
tling any  controversy.  [Cheers.]  But  then,  during  these 
eighty-four  years,  what  tremendous  questions  we  have  had, 
what  heated  words,  what  threatened  demonstrations  on 
both  sides,  and  yet  while  those  questions  were  such  as 
would  inevitably  have  brought  any  other  two  nations  into 
open  and  frequent  conflict,  they  have  all  been  arranged  and 
adjusted  between  us  without  even  a  resort  to  arms. 
[Cheers]. 

Look  at  some  of  those  questions — the  Oregon  boundary, 
the  North-East  boundary,  the  Confederate  cruisers,  the  Trent 
seizure — what  one  of  those  would  not  between  other  nations 
have  given  rise  to  war?  And  even  at  last  this  little  un- 
pleasantness about  Venezuela.  [Laughter.]  I  am  glad, 
gentlemen,  that  we  can  laugh  at  that  now,  ['•  Hear ! 
Hear!  "]  You  know  that  on  our  side  of  the  water  we  love 
occasionally  to  twist  the  British  lion's  tail  [laughter],  for  the 
mere  sport  of  hearing  him  roar.  [Renewed  laughter.]  That 
time  he  disappointed  us — he  would  not  roar  at  all.  ["  Hear  ! 
Hear!  "]  He  sat  as  silent  and  as  dumb  as  the  Sphinx  it- 
self, and  by  dint  of  mutual  forbearance,  of  which  I  have  no 
doubt  you  claim  the  lion's  share  [laughter]  ;  only  by  virtue 
of  your  national  emblem,  by  our  sober  second  thought  aid- 
ing your  sober  first  thought,  we  averted  everything  but  a 
mere  war  of  words.  [Cheers.]  And  now  the  Chief  Justice 
of  the  United  States  [Melville  W.  Fuller]  and  an  ex- 
President  of  the  United  States  [Benjamin  Harrison]  are 
shortly  coming  over  to  Paris  in  connection  with  similar 
great  representatives  of  your  own  jurists  to  settle  that 
vexed  question  which  has  agitated  the  remote  and  obscure 
corners  of  the  world.      ["  Hear  !      Hear  !  "] 

Before  I  sit  down  I  should  like  to  refer  to  two  or  three 
events  which  have  happened  since  I  have  been  in  England, 
which  are  illustrations  of  this  era  of  good  feeling. 
Something  happened  here  that  I  read  a  great  deal  about  in 
the  newspapers,  which  was  talked  about  as  a  great  crisis,  and 
when  the  first  fresh  breeze  blew  away  the  fog, — which  is  one 
of  Uic  ornanients  of  )'our  town    [laughter] — that   crisis  had 


PEACE    RETWEEX    NATIOXS  199 

disappeared  by  means  of  peaceful  diplomacy.  ["Hear! 
Hear  !  "J  That  is  what  we  in  America  want  to  imitate  and 
learn  ;  and  that  is  the  kind  of  diplomacy  which  I,  just  en- 
tering upon  the  diplomatic  career,  desire  very  much  to  ex- 
tend. For  I  am  fresh  enough  to  believe  that  if  these  two 
countries  labor  together  for  peace  and  unite  their  voices  in 
demanding  it,  it  is  almost  sure  in  every  case.  [Cheers.] 
Peace  is  our  paramount  interest,  and  it  is  also  yours  ;  and  I 
would  like  to  quote  my  President  again,  for  the  last  words 
1  heard  from  him  were  that  the  United  States  were  to-day 
on  better  terms  w^'th  every  nation  upon  the  face  of  the  earth 
than  they  had  ever  been  before.     [Cheers.] 

I  do  not  know  that  I  ought  to  say  anything  more  about 
our  country.  ["Go  on."]  America,  our  young  republic, 
has  had  a  great  deal  to  do  during  the  last  hundred  years; 
she  has  had  to  subdue  a  continent,  and  to  convert  the  wilder- 
ness from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  into  a  smiling  and 
healthy  garden.  That  business  has  pretty  nearly  been 
finished  off.  ["  Hear  !  Hear  !  "]  And  so  last  year  your 
Brother  Jonathan  started  out  to  see  the  world.  [Laughter.] 
He  put  on,  not  his  seven-league  boots,  but  his  700-league 
boots,  and  planted  his  footsteps  on  the  islands  of  the  sea. 
[Cheers.]  And  what  gigantic  strides  he  made  !  To  Hawaii, 
Manila,  and  another  step  would  have  brought  him  to  Hong 
Kong.  [Laughter  and  cheers.]  Our  interests  in  commerce 
differ  from  those  of  England,  not  in  kind  but  in  degree  only. 
[Cheers.]  And  it  is  certainly  by  a  common  purpose  and  a 
united  voice  that  we  can  command  peace  everywhere  for 
the  mutual  support  of  the  commerce  of  the  two  countries. 
[Cheers.] 

Now,  gentlemen,  let  me  say  one  word  more — a 
serious  word — in  illustration  of  this  happy  union  which  now 
prevails  between  our  two  nations.  I  should  not  be  satisfied 
myself  if  I  resumed  my  seat  without  referring  to  that 
universal  expression  of  grief  and  disappointment  which  over- 
came the  American  people  at  the  sudden  and  untimely  death 
of  Lord  Herschell.  Lord  Herschell  sacrificed  his  life  in  the 
common  service  of  both  nations.  [Cheers.]  I  first  had  the 
pleasure  of  meeting  him  nearly  twenty  years  ago,  when  he 
was  Solicitor-General,  at  the  house  of  Lord  I'^rederick  Cav- 
endish, who  was  soon  afterwards  enrolled  in  the  noble  army 


200  JOSEPH    HODGES   CHOATE 

of  martyrs.  I  have  watched  his  career  ever  since  with  that 
admiration  and  that  adoration  which  all  lawyers,  I  think,  felt 
for  him.  The  American  Bar  has  followed  in  his  footsteps — 
has  read  his  opinions,  has  admired  his  judicial  work  ;  and 
when  he  came  over  as  chief  representative  of  England  on 
the  Commission,  which  was  to  settle  all  disputes  between 
the  two  countries,  the  nation  felt  that  it  must  put  forth  its 
best  faculties  to  meet  him,  and  so  the  event  did  prove. 
[Cheers.]  He  maintained  the  trust  committed  to  him  with 
infinite  zeal  and  absolute  fidelity,  and  when  he  fell  the  obse- 
quies which  w^ere  performed  over  him  in  the  Capitol  of 
Washington,  in  the  presence  of  the  President,  and  of  all  the 
great  ofificials  of  the  nation,  were  as  sincere  and  as  sacred  as 
those  which  will  be  celebrated  in  a  few  days  by  his  own 
countrymen  in  Westminster  Abbey.  But  this  union  is  not 
confined  to  these  two  limited  countries,  if  I  may  speak  of 
England  as  a  limited  country.  We  have  had  another  event 
in  the  last  two  weeks  which  has  provoked  an  emotion  un- 
speakable on  every  continent  and  in  every  land  where  the 
English  language  is  spoken,  and  in  the  heart  of  every  man 
and  woman.  I  refer  to  the  sudden,  startling  and  almost 
fatal  illness  and  the  happy  recovery  of  Rudyard  Kipling. 
[Cheers.]  Somehow  or  other  he  had  reached  the  hearts,  I 
think,  of  more  English-speaking  men,  women  and  children 
of  the  world  than  any  other  living  writer.  He  was  cherished 
equally  in  the  palaces  of  Queens  and  Emperors,  and  in  the 
cabins  of  the  poor  ;  and  when  the  sorrowful  tidings  went 
out — borne  to  all  quarters  of  the  globe — of  his  sad  condi- 
tion, the  response  came  back  to  him,  which  if  he  has  now 
been  able  to  read  it,  must  have  thrilled  his  heart  with  grat- 
itude and  pride. 

Gentlemen,  we  are  almost  one  people.  [Loud  cheers.] 
What  I  say  is,  let  our  voices  always  be  lifted  together 
for  the  cause  of  human  progress  and  the  advance  of  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  take  my  word  for  it,  if  that  can  always  be  followed, 
law  and  order  and  peace  and  freedom — which  are  the  wants 
of  commerce  all  the  world  over — will  prevail  and  the  cause 
of  humanity  will  be  far  advanced.     [Loud  cheers.] 


LORD   RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL 


POLITICAL  LIFE  AND  THOUGHT  IN   ENGLAND 

[Speech  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  at  a  dinner  tendered  him  at  Cam- 
bridge, England,  June  6,  18S5,  by  the  University  Carlton  Club,  of  which  he 
was  President  at  that  time.] 

Gentlemen  : — It   may  not  be  uninteresting  to  many  of 
you  to  know  that  the   Cambridge   Carlton   had    a  very   re- 
markable effect  on  my  own  political  career,  whatever  it  is 
and  such  as  it  has  been.     There  was  a  time,  last  year,  when 
it  happened  to  me  to  be  engaged  in  something  partaking 
of  the  nature  of  a  struggle — at   any  rate,  in  a  difference  of 
opinion — with  men  of  great  position,   great  responsibility, 
and  great  experience,  as  to  the  form  which  modern  Conserva- 
tive political  organization  ought  to  take.     Well,  that  differ- 
ence of  opinion  at  one  time  became  very  sharp,  and  I  did  not 
know  what  the   result  of   it  might   be  ;  and   I   was  getting 
extremely  anxious,  more   for  the  sake  of  the  Conservative 
party  than  for  my  own  sake.     But  this  matter  had  attracted 
a  great  deal  of  public   attention,   and   one  evening  I  came 
home  from  the  House  of  Commons  very  anxious  and  rather 
discouraged,  because  at  the  House    of   Commons,  among 
people  whom  I  ought  to  look  upon  as  my  political  friends, 
I  had  met  nothing  but  gloomy  looks  ;  and  I  felt  very  much 
inclined  to  retire  from  the  game,  thinking  I  was  doing  more 
harm  than  good,  and  rather — to  use  a  slang  expression — 
disposed  to  cut  the  whole  concern. 

However,  when  I  arrived  at  my  house  I  found  there 
waiting  for  me  a  deputation  from  the  University  Carlton. 
Three  gentlemen — three,  I  will  venture  to  say,  of  the  most 
accomplished  and  able  envoys  ever  sent  out  on  any  mission 
— were  waiting  for  me ;  and  the  only  error  which  they  com- 

201 


203  LORD    RANDOLPH    CHURCHILL 

mitted — and  it  was  a  very  serious  error — was  that,  instead 
of  going  into  my  house  and  waiting  for  me  there,  with 
whatever  accommodation  that  dwelling  might  afford,  they 
waited  for  me  in  the  street,  and  had  been  waiting  for  me 
some  time.  And  they  conveyed  to  me  an  expression  of 
entire  sympathy  and  agreement  from  this  club  with  the 
views  which  I  had  then  put  forth,  and  they  invited  me  to  a 
banquet  to  be  held  in  this  town  under  the  auspices  of  this 
club.  I  do  not  think  you  can  imagine  the  effect  that  ex- 
pression of  sympathy  and  that  cordial  invitation  had  upon 
me  at  the  time.  Before  I  received  it,  I  felt  that  I  was  very 
young,  very  inexperienced,  and  very  much  alone,  and  I  did 
not  know  to  what  extent  any  portion  or  fraction  of  public 
opinion  might  be  with  me.  But  the  expression  of  opinion 
from  your  club  filled  me  with  hopes  that  after  all  I  was  not 
going  so  very  far  wrong — that  I  might  still  persevere  a  little 
longer ;  and  though  I  was  not  able  at  that  time  to  come  to 
the  banquet  to  which  I  was  invited,  still  I  did  persevere; 
everything  came  all  right,  everything  settled  down,  both  to 
the  harmony,  and,  I  think,  to  the  advantage  of  the  Tory 
party.  That  was,  to  my  mind,  and  must  always  be,  so  far 
as  I  am  concerned,  a  most  interesting  and  memorable  inci- 
dent.    It  was  an  encouragement  from  youth  to  youth. 

I  can  never  fail  to  take  the  deepest  and  most  abiding 
interest  in  the  fortunes  of  the  University  Carlton.  I  cannot 
say  how  glad  I  am  that  we  should  meet  together  at  last, 
and  make  each  other's  acquaintance.  When  I  arrived  at 
Brindisi,  in  April,  on  my  return  from  India,  the  only  letter 
which  met  me  from  Europe  was  an  invitation  from  this 
club  to  become  its  President,  and  to  attend  the  annual  dinner. 
I  knew  that  it  would  be  my  duty  and  my  pleasure  to  obey 
that  invitation,  but  as  the  time  of  the  dinner  drew  near  I 
thought  to  myself ;  "What  on  earth  am  I  going  to  say  at  the 
dinner?"  because  I  knew  from  experience  that  a  university 
audience  is  perhaps  more  critical  than  any  political  audience 
could  possibly  be.  I  thought  that  the  ordinary  topics,  not  to 
say  the  commonplaces,  of  party  controversy  would  be  inap- 
propriate to  the  concentrated  essence  of  intelligence  which  I 
see  before  me,  although  it  is  undoubtedly  very  important  at 
all  times  to  explain,  and  to  enlarge  upon,  the  nature  of  the 
differences  which  exist  between  the  Conservative  and  the 


POLITICAL   LIFE  AND  THOUGHT   IM   EX'GLAXD      203 

Liberal  party,  particularly  as  regards  the  present  state  of 
things.  Still,  if  I  were  to  take  up  your  time  this  evening 
by  bringing  up  the  case  which  the  Conservative  party  liave 
against  Her  Majesty's  Government,  I  feel  that  I  should  be 
imitating  the  action  of  the  man  who  carried  coals  to  New- 
castle. I  have  no  doubt  that  on  that  subject  you  can 
tell  me  a  great  deal  more  than  I  can  tell  you.  Besides 
which,  really,  as  regards  the  position  of  the  Government  at 
the  present  moment,  it  is  such  an  intensely  wretched 
position  that  they  have  almost  passed  beyond  the  scope  of 
blame.  No  one,  not  even  their  worst  enemy,  can  feel  any- 
thing for  them  but  pity.  My  own  feelings  with  regard  to 
them  are  precisely  similar  to  my  feelings  when  I  read  in  the 
paper  of  some  criminal  condemned  to  death.  I  imagine  one 
would  more  appropriately  address  them  as  the  Judge  is 
generally  supposed  to  address  the  convict  who  has  been 
condemned  to  death  :  "  Unfortunate  man,  I  do  not  wish 
by  any  word  of  mine  to  add  to  the  agony  of  your  last 
moments."  I  thought,  therefore,  that,  whatever  happened, 
I,  at  any  rate,  ought  to  try  to  direct  your  attention  to  some 
subject  a  little  less  commonplace,  and  suggest  respectfully 
to  your  consideration  some  subject  or  other  not  usually 
brought  up  at  political  gatherings. 

I  was  thinking  over  this,  and  it  suddenly  occurred  to  me 
how  very  little  time  the  ordinary  politician  has  for  political 
thought.  An  English  politician  of  the  present  day  lives  in 
such  a  giddy  hurly-burly  of  events,  incidents  flash  before 
his  mind  with  such  dazzling  rapidity  of  cause  and  conse- 
quence, and  he  has  at  the  same  time  to  deal  with  such  a 
complexity,  such  a  heterogeneous  mass  of  business,  that  as 
for  sitting  down  quietly  to  think  out,  and  getting  to  the 
bottom  of,  any  grave  political  situation — as  you  would  sit 
down  to  study  a  problem  of  chess — such  a  process  is  out  of 
the  question  and  almost  impossible.  What  is  the  nature  of 
the  life  of  an  ordinary  member  of  Parliament  ?  He  has  to 
fly  up  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  from  the  House  of 
Commons  he  has  to  fly  down  to  a  public  meeting,  at  which 
pubHc  meeting  he  is  supposed  and  expected  to  discuss  an 
illimitable  range  of  British  interests,  and  the  policy  of  the 
Government  as  regards  those  interests  :  and  having  done 
this,  he  is  again  obliged   to  fly  back   to   the   House  of  Com- 


204  LORD    RANDOLPH    CHURCHILL 

mons,  and  there  perhaps  take  part  cither  by  voting  or  speaking 
on  some  most  difficult  or  comph'cated  question  brimming 
over  with  serious  results,  either  to  himself  personally  or  to 
his  party.  Besides  that,  he  has  more  or  less— and  generally, 
I  fear,  less  rather  than  more — to  digest  and  assimilate  an 
immense  quantity  of  newspaper  and  periodical  literature, 
and  he  has  to  deal  with  an  enormous  mass  of  correspond- 
ence ;  because  the  great  feature  of  the  present  day  is  not 
only  the  cacoethes  lognendi,  but  also  the  caco'etJies  scri- 
bendi. 

There  are  many  people  nowadays  who  take  a  great  in^ 
terest  in  politics,  and  everybody  who  takes  a  great  interest 
in  politics  always  thinks  it  necessary,  from  time  to  time,  to 
write  voluminously,  generally  in  very  imperfect  caligraphy, 
to  his  own  particular  friend  in  the  House  of  Commons  for 
whom  he  happens  to  have  a  fancy.  That  is  the  nature  of 
the  duties  of  an  ordinary  member  of  Parliament.  And  what 
must  be  the  nature  of  the  duties  of  a  Minister,  who,  in  ad- 
dition to  all  that,  has  to  think  of  the  business  of  his  depart- 
ment, and  the  condition  of  his  Government,  and  the  pros- 
pects of  his  party?  In  such  a  state  of  things,  how  can  you 
expect,  on  any  subject,  anything  like  political  thought  ? 
How  can  you  expect  your  Government  or  your  public  men 
to  avoid  blunders  ?  How  can  you  expect  the  statesman- 
ship of  men  like  Lord  Grey,  or  men  like  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell, or  Sir  Robert  Peel,  or  Mr.  Canning,  or,  in  later  years. 
Lord  Beaconsfield  ?  I  do  not  believe  that  any  of  these 
great  statesmen  whom  I  have  named,  in  the  whole  course  of 
their  career,  attended  half  a  dozen  of  those  public  meetings 
of  the  nature  which  some  of  us  have  to  attend  every  week 
or  every  month.  Cabinet  Councils  were  very  few,  the 
House  of  Commons  rarely  sat  late,  and  the  sessions  were 
comparatively  short  ;  so  that  these  great  men  had  ample 
time  to  devote  their  abilities  to  deep  consideration  of  the 
affairs  of  their  country.  Yet  you  had  blunders  then,  and 
Governments  came  to  grief  ;  and  if  that  was  the  state  of 
things  then,  what  can  you  expect  now? 

This  is  essentially  an  age  of  action.  It  does  not  appear 
to  me  to  be  an  age  of  thought.  I  doubt  very  much 
whether,  if  Adam  Smith,  or  even  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill,  had 
lived  in  these  days,  they  would  have  been  able   to  produce 


FOLITICAL    LIFE    AND   TPIOUGHT    IX    EXGLAXD      205 

the  works  which  they  did  produce.  Raihvays  and  tele- 
graphs, the  steam  printing-machine,  and  shorthand  writing 
have  done  their  best  to  kill  political  thought.  It  is  essen- 
tially an  age  of  action,  but  action  based  rather  on  instinct 
than  on  logic,  or  reason,  or  experience.  Look  how  sud- 
denly things  occur,  how  very  little  anything  is  foreseen,  and 
how  very  rapidly  everything  is  forgotten.  Take  even  such 
instances  as  the  death  of  General  Gordon,  or  the  battle  of 
Penj-deh,  or  even  the  vote  of  credit,  and  Mr.  Gladstone's 
great  war  speech.  These  are  events  which  caused  in- 
tense and  immeasurable  excitement  at  the  moment.  That 
excitement  lasted  for  about  twenty-four  hours.  Everybody 
chattered  to  everybody  about  that  particular  subject  for 
that  space  of  time,  and  then  it  was  decently  interred,  for  all 
practical  political  purposes,  in  the  political  cemetery  of  ut- 
ter oblivion.  I  do  not  think  this  at  all  an  exaggerated  or 
untrue  picture  of  the  manner  in  which  we  conduct  our 
government  and  our  political  affairs.  It  is  a  very  serious 
consideration.  Yet,  strange  to  say,  I  suppose  there  never 
was  a  time  in  the  history  of  England  when  profound  politi- 
cal thought  and  prolonged  political  study  were  more  essen- 
tial to  the  interests  of  England. 

The  process  of  government  has  never  approached  even 
the  nature  of  an  exact  science.  It  has  always  been  purely 
empirical,  and  still  continues  to  be  so  ;  and  yet  the  difficul- 
ties of  government  now  grow  greater  and  greater  every  day, 
and  experience  seems  to  become  less  useful.  I  suppose 
there  is  not  a  man  in  England  more  experienced  in  the 
public  service — I  doubt  whether  there  has  ever  been  a  man 
of  greater  experience  in  the  public  service — than  Mr.  Glad- 
stone ;  and  yet  look  at  the  extraordinary  ill-luck,  to  put  it 
in  the  mildest  way,  which  has  attended  his  Government 
every  single  day.  There  are  a  great  many  people — I  dare  say 
there  are  people  in  this  university — who  will  tell  you  that,  if 
you  want  to  be  able  to  judge  the  present,  and  forecast  the 
future,  you  must  study  history.  Well,  I  apprehend  that  the 
study  of  history  in  our  present  case  is  almost  useless.  The 
study  of  history  to  the  Russian  politician  is  very  useful,  be- 
cause it  will  tell  him  what  must  be  the  inevitable  and  speedy 
end  of  a  grinding  and  cruel  despotism.  The  study  of 
history  to  the  German  may  be  useful,  because   it  will   tell 


206        LORD  RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL 

him  that  a  military  oligarchy,  acting  under  the  semblance 
of  a  constitutional  form,  is  a  political  system  of  ephemeral 
duration.  The  study  of  history  to  the  Frenchman  is  useful, 
because  it  will  tell  him  that  the  transition  from  a  republic 
to  absolute  and  irresponsible  power  in  one  man  is  alike  easy 
and  regular.  But,  in  our  case,  the  study  of  history  to  an 
English  politician  affords  very  little  guide  whatever,  be- 
cause the  state  of  things  you  have  to  deal  with  in  England, 
at  the  present  moment,  is  unparalleled  in  history. 

What  are  the  duties  of  the  English  Government  at  the 
present  moment  }  They  have  to  provide  for  the  security,  and, 
as  best  they  can,  to  minister  to  the  happiness  of  some  three 
hundred  millions  or  more  of  human  beings,  and  these  three 
hundred  millions  are  scattered  over  every  quarter  of  the 
world,  and  they  comprise  every  imaginable  variety  of  the 
human  race,  of  custom,  of  religion,  of  language  and  dialect. 
And  what  is  the  nature  of  the  Government  which  has  to 
discharge  these  extraordinary  and  unparalleled  duties? 
You  have  an  hereditary  monarchy,  exercising  an  immense 
influence  indirectly,  but  hardly  any  influence  directly — al- 
most precisely  the  reverse  of  what  was  the  nature  of  an 
hereditary  monarchy  two  hundred  years  ago.  You  have  an 
hereditary  Chamber  possessing  executive  and  legislative 
powers  ;  and  you  have  a  representative  Chamber  controlling 
these  two  forces  and  seeking  to  acquire,  and  gradually  ac- 
quiring, into  its  own  hands  almost  all  executive  and  legisla- 
tive authority.  All  these  three  institutions  are  institutions 
of  extremely  ancient  origin,  and  they  are  all  institutions 
intensely  conservative  in  their  constitution  and  their  pro- 
cedure. Because,  mind  you,  if  the  House  of  Commons 
were  to  be  elected  in  November,  and  were  to  be  composed 
almost  entirely  of  the  Radical  party,  still  you  may  take  it 
for  certain,  the  spirit  and  the  procedure  of  that  House  would 
be  intensely  conservative. 

What  is  the  foundation  of  this  very  curious  and  ancient 
structure  ?  The  foundation  is  totally  new,  purely  modern, 
absolutely  untried.  You  have  changed  the  old  foundation. 
You  have  gone  to  a  new  foundation.  Your  new  foundation 
is  a  great  seething  and  swaying  mass  of  some  five  million 
electors,  who  have  it  in  their  power,  if  they  should  so 
please,  by  the  mere  heave  of  the  shoulders,  if  they  only  act 


POLITICAL    LIFE    AND   THOUGHT    IN    ENGLAND      207 

with  moderate  unanimity,  to  sweep  away  entirely  the  three 
ancient  institutions  which  I  have  described,  and  put  any- 
thinc^  they  like  in  their  place,  and  to  alter  profoundly,  and 
perhaps  for  a  time  ruin  altogether,  the  interests  of  the  three 
hundred  million  beings  who  are  committed  to  their  charge. 
That  is,  I  say,  a  state  of  things  unparalleled  in  history. 

And  how  do  you  think  it  will  all  end  ?  Are  we  being 
swept  along  a  turbulent  and  irresistible  torrent  which  is  bear- 
ing us  towards  some  political  Niagara,  in  which  every  mortal 
thing  we  now  know  will  be  twisted  and  smashed  beyond  all 
recognition  ?  Or  are  we,  on  the  other  Jiand,  gliding  pas- 
sively along  a  quiet  river  of  human  progress  that  will  lead 
us  to  some  undiscovered  ocean  of  almost  superhuman 
development?  Who  can  tell?  Is  it  not,  gentlemen,  an 
age — is  not  this  a  moment — when  political  thought,  and  deep 
political  thought,  is  necessary  ?  To  what  extent  do  you 
think  these  five  million  electors  will  be  controlled,  or  in- 
fluenced, by  law  or  custom,  by  religion  or  by  reason  ?  I 
can  understand — it  is  not  difficult  to  understand — that  five 
million  people  may  govern  themselves  with  more  or  less 
success  ;  but  to  what  extent  will  these  five  million  people  be 
able  to  control  and  direct  the  destinies — and  in  what  man- 
ner will  they  do  so — of  the  three  hundred  millions  whom  they 
have  in  their  power?  And  to  what  extent  will  the  five 
million  electors  be  exempt  from  the  ordinary  human  in- 
fluences of  passion  and  caprice  ?  This  is  a  problem  totally 
new.  It  is  a  problem  upon  which  history  throws  no  light 
whatever,  and  moreover  it  is  a  problem  which  comes  at  a 
time  when  the  persons  who  are  chiefly  responsible  for  the 
government  of  our  country  are  precluded  by  the  very  cir- 
cumstances of  their  life  from  giving  it  the  deep  attention 
which  it  absolutely  requires. 

I  believe  that  a  club  like  yours  can  give  much  assistance 
in  this  direction.  You  are  not  yet  drawn  into  that  political 
machine  which  kills  thought  and  stifles  reflection.  I  dare 
say  many  of  those  whom  1  see  before  me  soon  will  be,  but 
some  of  you  perhaps  may  not.  At  any  rate,  all  I  would  say 
to  you,  filling  the  honorable  position  of  President,  to  which 
you  have  so  kindly  elected  me,  is  to  give  time  while  you 
have  time  to  political  thought,  and  to  the  present  considera- 
tion   of    these    questions,    and    to    questions    analogous  to 


208         LORD  RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL 

those  which  I  have  tried  to  set  before  you.  Discuss  them 
and  write  about  them,  and  lecture  about  them,  and  endeavor, 
in  your  respective  spheres,  to  stimulate  also  political 
thought  among  the  masses  of  your  fellow-countrymen.  But 
you  can  do  more  than  this,  because,  by  able  summaries  of 
statistical  information,  by  precise  investigation  into  sharply 
opposing  arguments,  and  by  original  conclusions  all  put  to- 
gether in  an  agreeable  and  attractive  literary  form,  you  may 
be  able  to  do  much  to  restrain  politicians  from  acting  hast- 
ily and  heedlessly  at  critical  moments  and  upon  important 
subjects.  In  all  probability,  you  possess  enormous  advan- 
tages for  this  task.  You  represent  the  most  perfect  centre 
of  higher  education,  practical  and  theoretical,  which  any 
country  can  show.  You  possess  mental  powers  at  the  present 
moment  in  their  highest  degree  of  energetic  efficiency.  Be- 
cause, depend  upon  it  that  the  mental  powers  of  a  man  of 
twenty-one  for  getting  at  the  bottom  of  any  difficult  ques- 
tion, or  for  arriving  at  the  truth  on  any  much-contested 
subject,  are  worth  double  and  treble  the  mental  powers  of  a 
man  of  thirty-five  or  forty,  w'ho,  harassed  and  exhausted  by 
ten  or  fifteen  years  of  active  political  life,  and  by  the  cir- 
cumstances of  that  life,  is  precluded  from  giving  to  the 
subject  the  concentrated  attention  you  can  give  it.  Do  you 
suppose  that  a  man  at  thirty-five  or  forty  could  go  in  for  the 
higher  mathematics  of  this  university  with  any  chance  of 
success?  Why,  he  would  be  mad  ;  every  undergraduate  in 
the  schools  would  beat  him  hollow.  And  yet,  the  difiicul- 
ties  of  the  extraordinary  problems  of  higher  mathematics 
are  as  nothing  compared  with  the  mystery,  darkness,  and 
confusion  that  surround  some  of  our  great  political  questions 
at  the  present  day.  I  am  quite  certain  that  it  is  impossible 
for  any  of  you  to  overestimate  the  benefits  you  can  confer 
upon  society,  and  your  country  generally,  by  devoting  and 
applying  your  best  energies  to  the  development  and  popular- 
ization of  high  and  deep  political  thought. 

I  have  shown — very  cursorily,  indeed,  but  in  a  manner  which 
your  own  intellects  will  fill  up — the  extraordinary,  unparal- 
elled  and  complicated  nature  of  the  political  problems  with 
which  political  parties  in  England  have  to  deal ;  and  I  have 
asked  you,  on  my  own  behalf  and  on  behalf  of  other  politi- 
cians busily  engaged,  for  your  assistance.     At  the  same  time, 


POLITICAL    LIFE    AND   THOUGHT    IN    EXGLAXD      209 

gentlemen,  I  do  not  wish  you  to  suppose,  for  a  moment, 
that  I  am  alarmed  as  to  the  future.  My  state  of  mind  when 
these  great  problems  come  across  me — which  is  very  rarely — is 
one  of  wonder,  or,  perhaps,  I  should  rather  say  of  admiration 
and  of  hope,  because  the  alternative  state  of  mind  would  be 
one  of  terror  and  despair.  And  I  am  guarded  from  that  lat- 
ter state  of  mind  by  a  firm  belief  in  the  essential  goodness  of 
life,  and  in  the  evolution,  by  some  process  or  other  which  I 
do  not  exactly  know  and  cannot  determine,  of  a  higher  and 
nobler  humanity.  But,  above  all,  my  especial  safeguard 
against  such  a  state  of  mental  annihilation  and  mental  despair 
is  my  firm  belief  in  the  ascertained  and  much-tried  common 
sense  which  is  the  peculiarity  of  the  English  people.  That 
is  the  faith  which,  I  think,  ought  to  animate  and  protect 
you  in  your  political  future;  that  is  the  faith  of  the  Tory 
democracy  in  which  I  shall  ever  abide  ;  that  is  the  faith 
which  your  club  can,  and  I  hope  will,  widely  and  wisely 
propagate ;  and  that  is  the  faith  which,  dominating  our 
minds  and  influencing  our  actions  on  all  occasions,  no  matter 
how  dark  and  gloomy  the  horizon  may  appear  to  be,  will 
contribute  to  preserve  and  adapt  the  institutions  of  our 
country  and  to  guarantee  and  to  consolidate  the  spreading 
dominions  of  the  Queen.     [Applause.] 


SAMUEL    LANGHORNE    CLEMENS 

(MARK  TWAIN) 


NEW  ENGLAND  WEATHER 

[Speech  of  vSaniuel  L.  Clemens  at  the  seventy-first  annual  dinner  of 
the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22,  1876. 
The  President,  William  Borden,  was  in  the  chair  and  announced  the 
eighth  regular  toast  as  follows  :  "  The  Oldest  luhauitaut — The 
Weather  of  New  England." 

"  Who  can  lose  it  and  forget  it? 

Who  can  have  it  and  regret  it  ?  " 
•'  Be  iuterposer  twixt  us  Twain." 

Jlferchant  of  Venice.^ 

Gentlemen  : — I  reverently  believe  that  the  Maker  who 
made  us  all,  makes  everything  in  New  England — but 
the  weather,  [  Laughter.]  I  don't  know  who  makes  that, 
but  I  think  it  must  be  raw  apprentices  in  the  Weather  Clerk's 
factor}^,  who  experiment  and  learn  how  in  New  England 
for  board  and  clothes,  and  then  are  promoted  to  make 
weather  for  countries  that  require  a  good  article  and  will 
take  their  custom  elsewhere  if  they  don't  get  it.  [Laughter.] 
There  is  a  sumptuous  variety  about  the  New  England 
weather  that  compels  the  stranger's  admiration  —  and  regret. 
[Laughter.]  The  weather  is  always  doing  something  there  ; 
always  attending  strictly  to  business;  always  getting  up 
new  designs  and  trying  them  on  the  people  to  see  how  they 
will  go.  [Laughter.]  But  it  gets  through  more  business  in 
spring  than  in  any  other  season.  In  the  spring  I  have 
counted  one  hundred  and  thirty-six  different  kinds  of  weather 
inside  of  four  and  twenty  hours.  [Laughter.]  It  was  I 
that  made  the  fame  and  fortune  of  that  man  that  had 
that  marvelous  collection   of  weather  on  exhibition  at  the 

2x0 


SAMUEL   LANGHORNE   CLEMENS 
{MARK  TWAIN) 

Photogravure  after  a  photograph  fro^n  life 


N K\Y  i::s G I ,A X I )  \v ]•: at m: r  211 

Centennial  that  so  astounded  the  foreigners.  lie  was  po. 
ing  to  travel  all  over  the  world  and  get  specimens  from  all 
the  climes.  I  said  :  "  Don't  you  do  it ;  you  come  to  New 
England  on  a  favorable  spring  day."  I  told  him  what  we  could 
do,  in  the  way  of  style,  variety,  and  quantity.  [I.aughtcr.] 
Well,  he  came,  and  he  made  his  collection  in  four  days. 
[Laughter.]  As  to  variety — why,  he  confessed  that  he  got 
hundreds  of  kinds  of  weather  that  he  had  never  heard  of  be- 
fore. And  as  to  quantity — well,  after  he  had  picked  out 
and  discarded  all  that  was  blemished  in  any  wav,  he  not 
only  had  weather  enough,  but  weather  to  spare;  weather  to 
hire  out  ;  weather  to  sell  ;  to  deposit ;  weather  to  invest  ; 
weather  to  give  to  the  poor.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

The  people  of  New  England  arc  by  nature  patient  and 
forbearing;  but  there  are  some  things  which  they  will  not 
stand.  Every  year  they  kill  a  lot  of  poets  for  writing  about 
"  Beautiful  Spring."  [Laughter.]  These  are  generally 
casual  visitors,  who  bring  their  notions  of  spring  from  some- 
w^here  else,  and  cannot,  of  course,  know  how  the  natives  feel 
about  spring.  And  so,  the  first  thing  they  know,  the  op- 
portunity to  inquire  how  they  feel  has  permanently  gone 
by.     [Laughter.] 

Old  Probabilities  has  a  mighty  reputation  for  accurate 
prophecy,  and  thoroughly  well  deserves  it.  You  take  up 
the  papers  and  observe  how  crisply  and  confidently  he 
checks  off  what  to-day's  weather  is  going  to  be  on  the 
Pacific,  down  South,  in  the  Middle  States,  in  the  Wisconsin 
region  ;  see  him  sail  along  in  the  joy  and  pride  of  his  power 
till  he  gets  to  New  England,  and  then — see  his  tail  drop. 
[Laughter.]  He  doesn't  know  what  the  weather  is  going 
to  be  in  New  England.  He  can't  any  more  tell  than  he  can 
tell  how  many  Presidents  of  the  United  States  there's  going 
to  be  next  year.  [Applause.]  Well,  he  mulls  over  it,  and 
by  and  by  he  gets  out  something  about  like  this :  Probable 
nor'-east  to  sou'-west  winds,  varying  to  the  southard  and 
westard  and  eastard  and  points  between ;  high  and  low 
barometer,  sweeping  around  from  place  to  place  ;  probable 
areas  of  rain,  snow,  hail,  and  drought,  succeeded  or  preceded 
by  earthquakes,  with  thunder  and  lightning.  [Loud  laughter 
and  applause.]  Then  he  jots  down  this  postscript  from  his 
wandering   mind  to   cover  accidents  :     "  But  it  is   possible 


212  SAMUEL    LAXGHORNE    CLEMENS 

that  the  programme  may  be  wholly  changed  in  the  mean 
time."     [Loud  laughter.] 

Yes,  one  of  the  brightest  gems  in  the  New  England 
weather  is  the  dazzling  uncertainty  of  it.  There  is  only 
one  thing  certain  about  it,  you  are  certain  there  is  going  to 
be  plenty  of  weather  [laughter] — a  perfect  grand  review; 
but  you  never  can  tell  which  end  of  the  procession  is  going 
to  move  first.  You  fix  up  for  the  drought ;  you  leave  your 
umbrella  in  the  house  and  sally  out  with  your  sprinkling- 
pot,  and  ten  to  one  you  get  drowned.  [Applause.]  You 
make  up  your  mind  that  the  earthquake  is  due  ;  you  stand 
from  under  and  take  hold  of  something  to  steady  yourself, 
and  the  first  thing  you  know,  you  get  struck  by  lightning. 
[Laughter.]  These  are  great  disappointments.  But  they 
can't  be  helped.  [Laughter.]  The  lightning  there  is  peculiar  ; 
it  is  so  convincing  !  When  it  strikes  a  thing,  it  doesn't  leave 
enough  of  that  thing  behind  for  you  to  tell  whether — well, 
you'd  think  it  was  something  valuable,  and  a  Congressman 
had  been  there.     [Loud  laughter  and  applause.] 

And  the  thunder.  When  the  thunder  commences  to 
merely  tune  up,  and  scrape,  and  saw,  and  key  up  the  instru- 
ments for  the  performance,  strangers  say  :  "  Wliy,  what  aw- 
ful thunder  you  have  here  !  "  But  when  the  baton  is  raised 
and  the  real  concert  begins  you'll  find  that  stranger  down 
in  the  cellar,  with  his  head  in  the  ash-barrel.     [Laughter.] 

Now,  as  to  the  size  of  the  weather  in  New  England — length- 
ways, I  mean.  It  is  utterly  disproportioned  to  the  size  of 
that  little  country.  [Laughter.]  Half  the  time,  when  it  is 
packed  as  full  as  it  can  stick,  you  will  see  that  New  England 
weather  sticking  out  beyond  the  edges  and  projecting  around 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  miles  over  the  neighboring  States. 
[Laughter.]  She  can't  hold  a  tenth  part  of  her  weather. 
You  can  see  cracks  all  about,  where  she  has  strained  herself 
trying  to  do  it.     [Laughter.] 

I  could  speak  volumes  about  the  inhuman  perversity  of  the 
New  England  weather,  but  I  will  give  but  a  single  specimen. 
I  like  to  hear  rain  on  a  tin  roof,  so  I  covered  part  of  my 
roof  with  tin,  with  an  eye  to  that  luxury.  Well,  sir,  do  you 
think  it  ever  rains  on  the  tin  ?  No,  sir  ;  skips  it  every  time. 
[Laughter.] 

Mind,    in   this  speech    I    have   been  trying  merely  to  do 


NE\V    EXGLAXD    WEATHER  21  ^ 

honor  to  the  New  England  weather;  no  language  could  do 
it  justice.  [Laughter.]  But  after  all,  there  are  at  least  one 
or  two  things  about  that  weather  (or,  if  you  please,  effects 
produced  by  it)  which  we  residents  would  not  like  to  part 
with.  [Applause.]  If  we  had  not  our  bewitching  autumn 
foliage,  we  should  still  have  to  credit  the  weather  with  one 
feature  which  compensates  for  all  its  bullying  vagaries — the 
ice-storm— when  a  leafless  tree  is  clothed  with  ice  from  the 
bottom  to  the  top — ice  that  is  as  bright  and  clear  as  crystal ; 
every  bough  and  twig  is  strung  with  ice-beads,  frozen  dew- 
drops,  and  the  whole  tree  sparkles,  cold  and  white,  like  the 
Shah  of  Persia's  diamond  plume.  [Applause.]  Then  the 
wind  waves  the  branches,  and  the  sun  comes  out  and  turns 
all  those  myriads  of  beads  and  drops  to  prisms,  that  glow 
and  hum  and  flash  with  all  manner  of  colored  fires,  which 
change  and  change  again,  with  inconceivable  rapidity,  from 
blue  to  red,  from  red  to  green,  and  green  to  gold  ;  the  tree 
becomes  a  sparkling  fountain,  a  very  explosion  of  dazzling 
jewels  ;  and  it  stands  there  the  acme,  the  climax,  the  su- 
premest  possibility  in  art  or  nature  of  bewildering,  intoxi- 
cating, intolerable  magnificence !  One  cannot  make  the 
words  too  strong.      [Long-continued  applause.] 

Month  after  month  I  lay  up  hate  and  grudge  against  the 
New  England  weather ;  but  when  the  ice-storm  comes  at 
last,  I  say  :  "  There,  I  forgive  you  now  ;  the  books  are  square 
between  us  ;  you  don't  owe  me  a  cent ;  go  and  sin  some 
more  ;  your  little  faults  and  foibles  count  for  nothing;  you 
are  the  most  enchanting  weather  in  the  world  !  "  [Applause 
and  laughter.] 


214        SAMUEL  LAXGHORXE  CLEMENS 


A  "LITTERY"  EPISODE 

[Speech  of  Samuel  L.  Clemens  at  the  "  Whittier  Birthday  Din- 
ner," at  the  Hotel  Brunswick,  Boston,  Mass.,  December  17,  1877, 
given  bv  the  publishers  of  the  "Atlantic  Monthl\',"  in  celebration  of  the 
seventieth  anniversary  of  John  Greenleaf  Whittier's  birthday,  and  the 
twentieth  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  the  magazine.  The  subjects  of 
ISIark  Twain's  wit— Emerson,  Longfellow,  and  Holmes— were  of  the 
large  company  present,  and  all  three  took  his  humorous  thrusts  witli 
supreme  good  nature.] 

Mr.  Chairman: — Thi.s  is  an  occasion  peculiarly  meet  for 
the  digging  up  of  pleasant  reminiscences  concerning  liter- 
ary folk ;  therefore,  I  will  drop  lightly  into  history  myself. 
Standing  here  on  the  shore  of  the  "  Atlantic,"  and  contem- 
plating certain  of  the  biggest  literary  billows,  I  am  reminded 
of  a  thing  which  happened  to  me  fifteen  years  ago,  when  I 
had  just  succeeded  in  stirring  up  a  little  Nevadian  literary 
ocean-puddle  myself,  whose  spume-flakes  were  beginning  to 
blow  thinly  California-wards.  I  started  on  an  inspection 
tram.p  through  the  southern  mines  of  California.  I  was 
callow  and  conceited,  and  I  resolved  to  try  the  virtue  of  my 
7toin  dc pluvie.  I  very  soon  had  an  opportunity.  I  knocked 
at  a  miner's  lonely  log-cabin  in  the  foot-hills  of  the  Sierras, 
just  at  nightfall.  It  was  snowing  at  the  time.  A  jaded, 
melancholy  man  of  fifty,  barefooted,  opened  to  me.  When 
he  heard  my  noni  de phunc  he  looked  more  dejected  than 
before.  He  let  mc  in  pretty  reluctantly,  I  thought, — and 
after  the  customary  bacon  and  beans,  black  coffee,  and  a  hot 
whiskey,  I  took  a  pi[)e.  This  sorrowful  man  had  not  said 
three  words  up  to  this  time.  Now  he  spoke  up  and  said,  in 
the  voice  of  one  who  is  secretly  suffering :  "  You're  the 
fourth — I'm  a-going  to  move."  "The  fourth  what?"  said 
I.  "  The  fourth  littery  man  that's  been  here  in  twent}-- 
four  hours — I'm  a-going  to  move,"  "  You  don't  tell  me  !  " 
said  I.  "Who  were  the  others.^"  "Mr.  Longfellow,  Mr. 
Emerson,  and  Mr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes — dad  fetch  the 
lot  !  "     [Laughter.] 

You  can  easily  believe  I  was  interested.  I  supplicated 
— three  hot  whiskys  did  the  rest — and  finally  the  melan- 
choly miner  began.     Said  he  :    "  They  cmc  here  just  at  dark 


A      ].Tr'i"i:KY "  i-;i'is()ii':  215 

yp'^terday  evening;,  ami  1  ht  them  in,  of  course.  Sai^l  they 
were  going  to  Yosemite.  They  were  a  rou-h  h)t  -  but  that's 
nothing— everybody  looks  rough  that  travels  afoot.  Mr. 
Emerson  was  a  seedy  little  bit  of  a  chap— red-headed.  Mr. 
Holmes  was  as  fat  as  a  balloon — he  w  eii^hed  as  much  as  three 
hundred,  and  had  double  chins  all  the  way  down  to  his 
stomach.  Mr.  Longfellow  was  built  like  a  prize  fighter. 
His  head  was  cropped  and  bristly — like  as  if  he  had  a  wig 
made  of  hair-brushes.  His  nose  lay  straight  down  his  face, 
like  a  finger  with  the  end-joint  tilted  up.  They  had  been 
drinking — I  could  see  that.  And  what  queer  talk  they 
used  !  Mr.  Holmes  inspected  this  cabin,  then  he  took  me 
by  the  buttonhole,  and  says  he  : — 

'  Through  the  deep  caves  of  thought 
I  hear  a  voice  that  sings  : 
Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul  !  ' 

[Laughter.] 

Says  I,  '  I  can't  afford  it,  Mr.  Holmes,  and,  moreover,  I 
don't  want  to.'  Blamed  if  I  liked  it  pretty  well,  either, 
coming  from  a  stranger,  that  way.  However,  I  started  to 
git  out  my  bacon  and  beans,  when  Mr.  Emerson  came  and 
looked  on  awhile,  and  then  he  takes  me  aside  by  the  button- 
hole and  says  : — 

'  Give  me  agates  for  my  meat  ; 
Give  me  cantharids  to  eat  ; 
From  air  and  ocean  bring  me  foods. 
From  all  zones  and  altitudes.' 

[Laughter.] 

Says  I,  '  Mr.  Emerson,  if  you'll  excuse  me,  this  ain't  no 
hotel.'  [Renewed  laughter.]  You  see  it  sort  of  riled  me, — 
I  wasn't  used  to  the  ways  of  littery  swells.  But  I  went  on 
a-sweating  over  my  work,  and  next  comes  Mr.  Longfellow 
and  buttonholes  me,  and  interrupts  me.     Says  he  : — 

'  Honor  be  to  Mudjikeewis  ! 
You  shall  hear  how  Paw-Puk-Keewis' — 

But  I  broke  in,  and  says  I,  *  Begging  your  pardon,  Mr. 
Longfellow,  if  you'll  be  so  kind  as  to  hold  your  yawp  for 
about  five  minutes  and  let  me  get  this  grub  ready,  you'll  do 
me  proud,'     [Continued  laughter.]     Well,  sir,  after  they'd 


2l6  SA^IUEL    LAX'GHORXE    CLEMENS 

filled  up  I  set  out  the  jug.  Mr.  Holmes  looks  at  it,  and 
then  fires  up  all  of  a  sudden,  and  yells  :— 

'  Flash  out  a  stream  of  blood-red  wine  ! 
For  I  would  drink  to  other  days.' 

[Great  merriment.] 

By  George,  I  was  getting  kind  o'  worked  up.  I  don't  deny 
it,  I  was  getting  kind  o'  worked  up.  I  turns  to  Mr, 
Holmes,  and,  says  I,  '  Looky  here,  my  fat  friend,  I'm 
a-running  this  shanty,  and  if  the  court  knows  herself,  you'll 
take  whisky-straight,  or  you'll  go  dry.'  [Laughter.]  Them's 
the  very  words  I  said  to  him.  Now  I  didn't  want  to  sass 
such  famous  littery  people,  but  you  see  they  kind  o'  forced 
me.  There  ain't  nothing  onreasonable  'bout  me  ;  I  don't 
mind  a  passel  of  guests  a-tread'n  on  my  tail  three  or  four 
times,  but  when  it  comes  to  standiii  on  it,  it's  different,  and 
if  the  court  knows  herself,  you'll  take  whisky-straight,  or 
you'll  go  dry.'  Well,  between  drinks,  they'd  swell  around 
the  cabin  and  strike  attitudes  and  spout.  [Laughter.]  Says 
Mr.  Longfellow  : — 

'  This  is  the  forest  primeval.' 
Says  Mr.  Emerson  : — 

'  Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world.' 

Says  I:  *  Oh,  blackguard  the  premises  as  much  as  you 
want  to — it  don't  cost  you  a  cent.'  [Laughter.]  Well, 
they  went  on  drinking,  and  pretty  soon  they  got  out  a 
greasy  old  deck  and  went  to  playing  cut-throat  euchre  at 
ten  cents  a  corner — on  trust.  I  begun  to  notice  some  pretty 
suspicious  things.  Mr.  Emerson  dealt,  looked  at  his  hand, 
shook  his  head,  says  : — 

'  I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt  ' 

— and  calmly  bunched  the  hands  and  went  to  shuffling  for  a 
new  lay  out.     Says  he  : — 

'  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out ; 
They  know  not  well  the  subtle  ways 
I  keep,  I  pass,  and  deal  again  !  ' 
[Laughter.] 


A        LITTKRY       EPISODE  21 7 

Hang'd  if  he  didn't  go  ahead,  and  do  it,  too  !  O,  he  was  a 
cool  ane  !  Well,  in  about  a  minute,  things  were  running 
pretty  tight,  but  of  a  sudden  I  see  by  Mr.  Emerson's  eye 
that  he  judged  he  had  'em.  lie  had  already  corralled  two 
tricks,  and  each  of  the  others  one.  So  now  he  kind  o'  lifts 
a  little  in  his  chair,  and  says  : — 

'  I  tire  of  globes  and  aces  ! 
Too  long  the  game  is  played  ! ' 

• — and  down  he  fetched  a  right  bower.  Mr.  Longfellow 
smiles  as  sweet  as  pie,  and  says  : — 

'  Thanks,  thanks  to  thee,  my  worthy  friend, 
For  the  lesson  thou  hast  taught.' 

— and  dog  my  cats  if  he  didn't  down  with  another  right 
bower  !  Well,  sir,  up  jumps  Holmes,  a-war-whooping  as 
usual,  and  says  : — 

'  God  help  them  if  the  tempest  swings 
The  pine  against  the  palm  !  ' 

— and  I  wish  I  may  go  to  grass  if  he  didn't  swoop  down 
with  another  right  bower!  [Great  laughter.]  Emerson 
claps  his  hand  on  his  bowie,  Longfellow  claps  his  on  his 
revolver,  and  I  went  under  a  bunk.  There  was  going  to  be 
trouble;  but  that  monstrous  Holmes  rose  up,  wobbling  his 
double  chins,  and  says  he:  'Order,  gentlemen!  The  first 
man  that  draws,  I'll  lay  down  on  him  and  smother  him  !  ' 
[Laughter,]     All  quiet  on  the  Potomac,  you  bet  you  ! 

"  They  were  pretty  how-comc-you-so  now,  and  they  be- 
gun to  blow.  Emerson  says,  '  The  bulliest  thing  I  ever 
wrote  was  "  Barbara  Frietchie."  '  Says  Longfellow, '  It  don't 
begin  with  my  "  Biglow  Papers."  '  Says  Holmes,  '  My 
"  Thanatopsis  "  lays  over  'em  both.'  [Laughter.]  They 
mighty  near  ended  in  a  fight.  Then  they  wished  they  had 
some  more  company,  and  Mr.  Emerson  pointed  at  me  and 
says  : — 

'  Is  yonder  squalid  peasant  all 
That  this  proud  nursery  could  breed  ?  * 

[Laughter.] 

He  was  a-whetting   his  bowie  on  his  boot — so  I  let  it   pass. 

[Laughter.]     Well,  sir,  next  they  took  it  into  their  heads 


2l8  SAMUEL    LAXGHORXE    CLEMENS 

that  they  would  Hke  some  music  ;  so  they  made  me  stand 
up  and  sing  '  When  Johnny  Comes  Marching  Home  ',  till  I 
dropped — at  thirteen  minutes  past  four  this  morning.  That's 
what  I've  been  through,  my  friend.  When  I  woke  at  seven 
they  were  leaving,  thank  goodness,  and  Mr.  Longfellow  had 
my  only  boots  on,  and  his  own  under  his  arm.  Says  I, 
'  Hold  on  there,  Evangeline,  what  you  going  to  do  with 
tJicni  ?'     He  says,  '  Going  to  make  tracks  with  'em,  because — 

'  Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us 
We  can  make  our  lives  sublime  ; 
And  departing,  leave  behind  us 
Footprints  on  the  sands  of  time.' 

[Laughter.] 

"  As  I  said,  Mr.  Twain,  you  are  the  fourth  in  twenty-four 
hours — and  I'm  going  to  move — I  ain't  suited  to  a  littery 
atmosphere." 

I  said  to  the  miner,  "  Why,  my  dear  sir,  tJiese  were  not 
the  gracious  singers  to  whom  we  and  the  world  pay  loving 
reverence  and  homage  :  these  were  impostors." 

The  miner  investigated  me  with  a  calm  eye  for  a  while, 
then  said  he,  "  Ah  !  impostors,  were  they  ? — are  you  ?  " 
I  did  not  pursue  the  subject ;  and  since  then  I  haven't 
traveled  on  my  noin  de  plume  enough  to  hurt. 

Such  was  the  reminiscence  I  was  moved  to  contribute, 
Mr.  Chairman.  \\\  my  enthusiasm  I  may  have  exaggerated 
the  details  a  little  ;  but  you  will  easily  forgive  me  that 
fault,  since  I  believe  it  is  the  first  time  I  have  ever  deflected 
from  perpendicular  fact  on  an  occasion  like  this.  [Laughter 
and  applause.] 


THE  BABIES 


[Speech  of  Samuel  L.  Clemens  at  a  banquet  given  b}-  the  Army  of  ths 
Tennessee  at  Chicago,  111.  November  13,  1879,  'i^  honor  of  General 
Grant  on  his  return  from  his  trip  around  the  world.  Mark  Twain  re- 
sponded to  the  toast  :  "  The  Babies  :  As  they  comfort  us  in  our  sorrows, 
let  us  not  forget  them  in  our  festivities."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen :—" The  Babies!" 
Now,  that's  something  like.  We  haven't  all  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  ladies  ;  we  have  not  all  been  generals,  or  poets. 


THE    BABIES 


219 


or  statesmen  ;  but  when  the  toast  works  clown  to  the  babies, 
we  stand  on  common  ground — for  we've  all  been  babies. 
[Laughter.]  It  is  a  shame  that  for  a  thousand  years  the 
world's  banquets  have  utterly  ignored  the  baby,  as  if  he 
didn't  amount  to  anything!  If  you,  gentlemen,  will  stop 
and  think  a  minute — if  you  will  go  back  fifty  or  a  hundred 
years,  to  your  early  married  life  and  recontemplate  your 
first  baby — you  will  remember  that  he  amounted  to  a  good 
deal — and  even  something  over.      [Laughter.] 

You  soldiers  all  know  that  when  that  little  fellow  arrived 
at  family  headquarters  you  had  to  hand  in  your  resignation. 
He  took  entire  command.  Vou  became  his  lackey,  his 
mere  body-guard;  and  you  had  to  stand  around,  too.  He 
was  not  a  commander  who  made  allowances  for  the  time, 
distance,  weather,  or  anything  else:  you  had  to  execute  his 
order  whether  it  was  possible  or  not.  And  there  was  only 
one  form  of  marching  in  his  manual  of  tactics,  and  that  was 
the  double-quick.  [Laughter.]  He  treated  you  with  every 
sort  of  insolence  and  disrespect,  and  the  bravest  of  you  did 
not  dare  to  say  a  word.  You  could  face  the  death-storm  of 
Donelson  and  Vicksburg,  and  give  back  blow  for  blow  ; 
but  when  he  clawed  your  whiskers  and  pulled  your  hair, 
and  twisted  your  nose  you  had  to  take  it.  [Laughter.] 
When  the  thunders  of  war  sounded  in  your  ears,  you  set 
your  faces  towards  the  batteries  and  advanced  with  steady 
tread;  but  when  he  turned  on  the  terrors  of  his  war-whoop 
[laughter],  you  advanced  in — the  other  direction,  and  mighty 
glad  of  the  chance,  too.  When  he  called  for  soothing  syrup 
did  you  venture  to  throw  out  any  remarks  about  certain 
services  being  unbecoming  to  an  of^cer  and  a  gentleman  ? 
No;  you  got  up  and  got  it !  If  he  ordered  his  pap-bottle 
and  it  wasn't  warm,  did  you  talk  back  ?  Not  you  ;  you 
went  to  work  and  warmed  it.  You  even  descended  so  far 
in  your  menial  office  as  to  take  a  suck  at  that  warm,  insipid 
stuff  yourself  to  see  if  it  was  right! — three  parts  water  to 
one  of  milk,  a  touch  of  sugar  to  modify  the  colic,  and  a 
drop  of  peppermint  to  kill  those  immortal  hiccoughs.  I  can 
taste  that  stuff  yet !     [Uproarious  laughter.] 

And  how  many  things  you  learned  as  you  went  along! 
Sentimental  young  folks  still  take  stock  in  that  beautiful 
old  saying,  that  when  the  baby  smiles   in   his   sleep  it  is  be- 


220  SAMUEL    LAXGHORXE    CLEMENS 

f  lusc  the  angels  are  Avhispering  to  him.  Very  pretty,  but 
"too  thin"— simply  wind  on  the  stomach,  my  friends. 
[Laughter.]  If  the  baby  proposed  to  take  a  walk  at  his 
usuaniour—half-past  two  in  the  morning— didn't  you  rise 
up  promptly  and  remark  (with  a  mental  addition  which 
wouldn't  improve  a  Sunday-school  much)  that  that  was  the 
very  thing  you  were  about  to  propose  yourself?  Oh,  you 
were  under  good  discipline.  And  as  you  went  fluttering  up 
and  down  the  room  in  your  "  undress  uniform  "  [laughter], 
you  not  only  prattled  undignified  baby-talk,  but  even  tuned 
up  your  martial  voices  and  tried  to  sing  "  Rock-a-bye-baby  on 
the  tree-top,"  for  instance.  What  a  spectacle  for  an  Army 
of  the  Tennessee  !  And  what  an  afBiction  for  the  neighbors, 
too,  for  it  isn't  everybody  within  a  mile  around  that  likes 
military  music  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  [Laughter.] 
And  when  you  had  been  keeping  this  sort  of  thing  up  two 
or  three  hours,  and  your  little  velvet  head  intimated  that 
nothing  suited  him  like  exercise  and  noise,  and  proposed  to 
fight  it  out  on  that  line  if  it  took  all  night — "  Go  on  !  What 
did  you  do  ?  "  You  simply  went  on  till  you  dropped  in  the 
last  ditch.     [Laughter.] 

I  like  the  idea  that  a  baby  doesn't  amount  to  anything  ! 
Why,  one  baby  is  just  a  house  and  a  front  yard  full  by 
itself ;  one  baby  can  furnish  more  business  than  you  and 
your  whole  interior  department  can  attend  to  ;  he  is  en- 
terprising, irrepressible,  brimful  of  lawless  activities  ;  do 
what  you  please,  you  can't  make  him  stay  on  the  reserva- 
tion. Suf^cient  unto  the  day  is  one  baby.  As  long  as  you 
are  in  your  right  mind  don't  you  ever  pray  for  twins.  Twins 
amount  to  a  permanent  riot;  and  there  ain't  any  real  differ- 
ence between  triplets  and  insurrection.     [Great  laughter.] 

Among  the  three  or  four  million  cradles  now  rocking  in 
the  land,  are  some  which  this  nation  would  preserve  for  ages 
as  sacred  things  if  we  could  know  which  ones  they  are.  For 
in  one  of  these  cradles  the  unconscious  Farragut  of  the  future 
is  at  this  moment  teething.  Think  of  it  !  and  putting  a 
word  of  dead  earnest,  unarticulated,  but  justifiable,  pro- 
fanity over  it,  too;  in  another,  the  future  renowned  astrono- 
mer is  blinking  at  the  shining  Milky  Way  with  but  a  languid 
interest,  poor  little  chap,  and  wondering  what  has  become 
of  that  other  one  they  call  the  wet-nurse  ;  in  another,  the 


UNXOXSCIOUS    PLAGIARISM  221 

future  great  historian  is  lying,  and  tloubtless  he  will  con- 
tinue  to  lie  until  his  earthly  mission  is  ended  ;  in  another, 
the  future  President  is  busying  himself  with  no  profoundcr 
problem  of  State  than  what  the  mischief  has  become  of  his 
hair  so  early  [laughter]  ;  and  in  a  mighty  array  of  other 
cradles  there  are  now  some  sixty  thousand  future  office- 
seekers  getting  ready  to  furnish  him  occasion  to  grapple 
with  that  same  old  problem  a  second  time!  And  in  still 
one  more  cradle,  somewhere  under  the  flag,  the  future  illus- 
trious commander-in-chief  of  the  American  armies  is  so  little 
burdened  with  his  approaching  grandeurs  and  responsibili- 
ties as  to  be  giving  his  whole  strategic  mind,  at  this  moment, 
to  trying  to  find  out  some  way  to  get  his  own  big  toe  into 
his  mouth,  an  achievement  which  (meaning  no  disrespect) 
the  illustrious  guest  of  this  evening  also  turned  his  atten- 
tion to  some  fifty-six  years  ago  !  And  if  the  child  is  but 
the  prophecy  of  the  man  there  are  mighty  few  will  doubt 
that  he  succeeded.     [Laughter  and  prolonged  applause.] 


UNCONSCIOUS  PLAGIARISM 

[Speech  of  Samuel  L.  Clemens  at  the  "  Holmes  Breakfast  "  in  Boston, 
December  3,  1879,  given  by  the  publishers  of  the  "Atlantic  Monthly  "  to 
Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  upon  his  seventieth  birthday,  for  which  oc- 
casion the  Autocrat  wrote  his  poem,  "  The  Iron  Gate,"  closing  with  the 
tender  lines  : — 

"  And  now  with  grateful  smile  and  accents  cheerful, 
And  warmer  heart  than  look  or  word  can  tell, 
In  simplest  phrase — these  traitorous  eyes  are  tearful — 
Thanks,  Brothers,  Sisters,  Children — and  Farewell  !  "] 

Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen:— I  would 
have  travelled  a  much  greater  distance  than  I  have  come  to 
witness  the  paying  of  honors  to  Dr.  Holmes.  For  my  feel- 
ing toward  him  has  always  been  one  of  peculiar  warmth. 
When  one  receives  a  letter  from  a  great  man  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life,  it  is  a  large  event  to  him,  as  all  of  you  know 
by  your  own  experience.  You  never  can  receive  letters 
enough  from  famous  men  afterward  to  obliterate  that  one, 
or  dim  the  memory  of  the  pleasant  surprise  it  was,  and  the 


2  22  SAMUEL    LAN'GHORXE    CLEMENS 

gratification  it  gave  you.  Lapse  of  time  cannot  make  it 
commonplace  or  cheap. 

Well,  the  first  great  man  who  ever  wrote  me  a  letter  was 
our  guest — Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  He  was  also  the  first 
great  literary  man  I  ever  stole  anything  from  [laughter], 
and  that  is  how  I  came  to  write  to  him  and  he  to  me.  When 
my  first  book  was  new  a  friend  of  mine  said  to  me,  "  The 
dedication  is  very  neat."  Yes,  I  said,  I  thought  it  was. 
My  friend  said  :  "  I  always  admired  it,  even  before  I  saw  it 
in  the  '  Innocents  Abroad.'"  I  naturally  said,  "What  do 
you  mean  ?  Where  did  you  ever  see  it  before?"  "  Well,  I 
saw  it  first  some  years  ago  as  Dr.  Holmes's  dedication  to 
his  '  Songs  in  Many  Keys.'"  Of  course,  my  first  impulse 
Avas  to  prepare  this  man's  remains  for  burial  [laughter],  but 
upon  reflection  I  said  I  would  reprieve  him  for  a  moment  or 
two,  and  give  him  a  chance  to  prove  his  assertion  if  he  could. 
We  stepped  into  a  bookstore,  and  he  did  prove  it.  I  had 
really  stolen  that  dedication,  almost  word  for  word.  I  could 
not  imagine  how  this  curious  thing  had  happened  ;  for  I 
knew  one  thing,  for  a  dead  certainty, — that  a  certain  amount 
of  pride  always  goes  along  with  a  teaspoonful  of  brains,  and 
that  this  pride  protects  a  man  from  deliberately  stealing 
other  people's  ideas.  That  is  what  a  teaspoonful  of  brains 
will  do  for  a  man, — and  admirers  had  often  told  me  I  had 
nearly  a  basketful,  though  they  were  rather  reserved  as  to 
the  size  of  the  basket.      [Laughter.] 

However,  1  thought  the  thing  out  and  solved  the  mys- 
tery. Two  years  before  I  had  been  laid  up  a  couple  of 
M'eeks  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and  had  read  and  reread 
Dr.  Holmes's  poems  until  my  mental  reservoir  was  filled 
up  with  them  to  the  brim.  The  dedication  lay  on  top  and 
handy  [laughter],  so  by  and  by  I  unconsciously  stole  it. 
Perhaps  I  unconsciously  stole  the  rest  of  the  volume,  too, 
for  many  people  have  told  me  that  mj^  book  was  pretty 
poetical,  in  one  way  or  another.  Well,  of  course,  I  wrote 
Dr.  Holmes  and  told  him  I  hadn't  meant  to  steal,  and  he 
wrote  back  and  said  in  the  kindest  way  that  it  was  all  right 
and  no  harm  done  ;  and  added  that  he  believed  we  all  un- 
consciously worked  over  ideas  gathered  in  reading  and  hear- 
ing, iinagining  they  were  original  with  ourselves.  lie 
stated  a  truth,  and  did  it  in  such  a  pleasant  way,  and  salved 


MISTAKEN    IDFA'TITV  223 

over  my  sore  spot  so  gently  nnd  so  healingly,  that  I  was 
rather  glad  I  had  committed  the  crime,  for  the  sake  of  the 
letter.  I  afterward  called  on  hin^  and  told  him  to  make 
perfectly  free  with  any  ideas  of  mine  that  struck  him  as 
being  good  protoplasm  for  poetry.  [Laughter.]  lie 
could  sec  by  that  that  there  wasn't  anything  mean  about 
me  ;  so  we  got  along  right  from  the  start. 

I  have  met  Dr.  Holmes  many  times  since  ;  and  lately  he 
said, — however,  I  am  -wandering  wildly  away  from  the  one 
thing  which  I  got  on  my  feet  to  do  :  that  is,  to  make  my 
compliments  to  you,  my  fellow-teachers  of  the  great  public, 
and  likewise  to  say  I  am  right  glad  to  see  that  Dr.  Holmes 
is  still  in  his  prime  and  full  of  generous  life  ;  and  as  age  is 
not  determined  by  years,  but  by  trouble  and  infirmities  of 
mind  and  body,  I  hope  it  may  be  a  very  long  time  yet  be- 
fore any  can  truthfully  say,  "  He  is  growing  old."  [Ap- 
plause.] 


MISTAKEN  IDENTITY 

[Speech  of  Samuel  I,.  Clemens,  at  the  "  Ladies  '  Night  "  banquet  of  the 
Papyrus  Club,  Boston,  February  24,  1S81.] 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : — I  am  perfectly  astounded  at 
the  way  in  which  history  repeats  itself.  I  find  myself 
situated,  at  this  moment,  exactly  and  precisely  as  I  was 
once  before,  years  ago,  to  a  jot,  to  a  tittle,  to  a  very  hair. 
There  isn't  a  shade  of  difference.  It  is  the  most  astonish- 
ing coincidence  that  ever — but  wait,  I  will  tell  you  the  for- 
mer instance  and  then  you  will  see  it  yourselves. 

Years  ago  I  arrived  one  day  at  Salamanca,  Pa.,  eastward 
bound,  must  change  cars  there,  and  take  the  sleeper-train. 
There  were  crowds  of  people  there,  and  they  were  swarm- 
ing into  the  long  sleeper-train  and  packing  it  full,  and  it 
was  a  perfect  purgatory  of  rush  and  confusion  and  gritting 
of  teeth,  and  soft,  sweet,  and  low  profanity.  I  asked  the 
young  man  in  the  ticket  office  if  I  could  have  a  sleeping 
section,  and  he  answered  "  No  !  "  with  a  snarl  that  shrivelled 
me  up  like  burned  leather.  I  went  off  smarting  under  this 
insult  to  my  dignity  and  asked  another  local  official, supplicate 


224  SAMUEL    LAXGIIORNE    CLEMENS 

in^ly,  if  I  couldn't  have  some  poor  little  corner  somewhere 
in  a  sleeping  car,  and  he  cut  me  short  with  a  venomous 
"  No,  }'ou  can't ;  every  corner's  full — now  don't  bother  me 
any  more."  And  he  turned  his  back  and  walked  off.  My 
diornitv  was  in  a  state  now  which  cannot  be  described.  I 
was    so  ruffled  that — well,   I    said    to  my  companion  :  "  If 

these  people  knew  who  I  am  they "     But  my  companion 

cut  me  short  there,  and  said:  "Don't  talk  such  folly!  If 
they  did  know  who  you  are,  do  you  suppose  it  would  help 
your  high  mightiness  to  a  vacancy  in  a  train  which  has  no 
vacancies  in  it?  Ah,  me  !  if  you  could  only  get  rid  of  148 
pounds  of  your  self-conceit,  I  would  value  the  other  pound 
of  you  above  the  national  debt." 

This  did  not  improve  my  condition  any  to  speak  of.  But 
just  then  I  observed  that  the  colored  porter  of  a  sleeping-car 
had  his  eye  on  me  ;  I  saw  his  dark  countenance  light  up  ; 
he  whispered  to  the  uniformed  conductor,  punctuating 
with  nods  and  jerks  toward  me,  and  straightway  this  con- 
ductor came  forward,  oozing  politeness  from  every  pore, 
and  said  :  "  Can  I  be  of  any  service  ?  Will  you  have  a 
place  in  the  sleeper  ?  "  "  Yes,"  I  said,  "  and  much  obliged, 
too  ;  give  me  anything — anything  will  answer."  He  said, 
"  We  have  nothing  left  but  the  big  family  stateroom,  with 
two  berths  and  a  couple  of  armchairs  in  it  ;  but  it  is  entirely 
at  your  disposal,  and  we  shall  not  charge  you  any  more 
than  we  should  for  a  couple  of  ordinary  berths.  Here, 
Tom,  take  these  satchels  aboard."  He  touched  his  hat, 
and  we  and  the  colored  Tom  moved  along.  I  was  bursting 
to  drop  just  one  little  remark  to  my  companion,  but  I  held 
in  and  waited. 

Tom  made  us  comfortable  in  that  sumptuous  great  apart- 
ment, and  then  said,  with  many  bows  and  a  perfect  affluence 
of  smile  :  "  Now,  is  dey  anything  you  want,  sah  ? — 'case  you 
kin  have  jes'  anything  you  wants,  don't  make  no  difference 
what  it  is."  I  said,  "  Can  I  have  some  hot  water  and  a 
tumbler  at  nine  to-night — blazing  hot,  you  know — about 
the  right  temperature  for  a  hot  Scotch  punch?"  "Yes, 
sah,  dat  you  kin  ;  you  can  'pen'  on  it ;  I'll  get  it  myse'f." 
"  Good  ;  now  that  lamp  ishungtoo  high  ;  can  I  have  a  big 
coach  candle  fixed  up  just  at  the  head  of  my  bed,  so  that  I  can 
read  comfortably?"     "Yes,  sah,  you  kin;  I'll  fix  her  up 


WOMAX,    COD    HLESS    IIKR  !  ^25 

myse'f,  an'  I'll  fix  her  so  she'll  burn  all  nl^Ljht,  an*  I'll  see 
dat  she  does,  too,  'case  I'll  keep  my  eye  on  her  troo  dc  do'; 
yes,sah,  an' you  kin  jcs  call  for  anything  you  wants— it 
don't  make  no  difference  what  it  is— an'  dis  yer  whole  rail- 
road'll  be  turned  wrong  eend  up  an'  inside  out  for  to  git  it 
for  you — dat's  so  !  "     And  lie  disappeared. 

Well,  I  tilted  my  head  back,  hooked  my  thumbs  in  my 
armholes,  smiled  a  smile  on  my  companion,  and  said 
gently:  "  Well,  what  do  you  say  now?"  My  companion 
was  not  in  a  humor  to  respond — and  didn't.  The  next 
moment  that  smiling  black  face  was  thrust  in  at  the  crack 
of  the  door,  and  this  speech  followed  :  "  Law  bless  you, 
sah,  I  knowed  you  in  a  minute!  I  told  the  conductah  so. 
Laws,  I  knowed  you  the  minute  I  set  eyes  on  you."  "Is 
that  so,  my  boy  (handing  him  a  quadruple  fee)  ;  well,  who 
am  I  ?  "  "  General  McClellan  !  "  [great  merriment]— and 
he  disappeared  again.  My  companion  said,  vinegarishly, 
"  Well,  what  do  you  say  now  ?  " 

Right  there  comes  in  the  marvelous  coincidence  I  men- 
tioned  a  week  ago,  viz.,  I  was — speechless.  And  that  is  my 
condition  now.     Perceive  it  ?     [Laughter  and  applause.] 


WOMAN,  GOD   BLESS  HER! 

[Speech  of  vSamuel  L.  Clemens,  at  the  77th  anniversary  banquet  of  the 
New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22,  1SS2. 
Joseph  M.  Fiske,  President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair.  Mr.  Clemens 
spoke  to  the  toast  "  Woman,  God  bless  her  !  "] 

The  toast  includes  the  sex,  universally  ;  it  is  to  Woman 
comprehensively,  wheresoever  she  may  be  found.  Let  us 
consider  her  ways.  First  com.es  the  matter  of  dress.  This 
is  a  most  important  consideration,  and  must  be  disposed  of 
before  we  can  intelligently  proceed  to  examine  the  pro- 
founder  depths  of  the  themie.  For  text  let  us  take  the 
dress  of  two  antipodal  types — the  savage  woman  of  Central 
Africa  and  the  cultivated  daughter  of  our  high  modern  civi- 
lization. Among  the  Fans,  a  great  negro  tribe,  a  woman 
when  dressed  for  home,  or  to  go  out  shopping  or  calling, 
doesn't  wear  anything  at  all  but  just  her  complexion. 
IS 


2  26        SAMUEL  LANGHORNE  CLEMENS 

[Laughter.]  That  is  all ;  it  is  her  entire  outfit.  [Laughter.] 
It  is  the  lightest  costume  in  the  world,  but  is  made  of  the 
darkest  material.  [Laughter.]  It  has  often  been  mistaken 
for  mourning.  [Laughter.]  It  is  the  trimmest,  and  neat- 
est, and  gracefulest  costume  that  is  now  in  fashion  ;  it 
wears  well,  is  fast  colors,  doesn't  show  dirt,  you  don't  have 
to  send  it  down-town  to  wash,  and  have  some  of  it  corne 
back  scorched  with  the  flat-iron,  and  some  of  it  with  the 
buttons  ironed  off,  and  some  of  it  petrified  with  starch,  and 
some  of  it  chewed  by  the  calf,  and  some  of  it  rotted  with 
acids,  and  some  of  it  exchanged  for  other  customers'  things 
that  haven't  any  virtue  but  holiness,  and  ten-twelfths  of  the 
pieces  overcharged  for  and  the  rest  of  the  dozen  "  mislaid." 
[Laughter].  And  it  always  fits  ;  it  is  the  perfection  of  a 
fit.  [Laughter.]  And  it  is  the  handiest  dress  in  the  whole 
realm  of  fashion.  It  is  always  ready,  always  "  done  up." 
When  you  call  on  a  Fan  lady  and  send  up  your  card,  the 
hired  girl  never  says,  "  Please  take  a  seat,  madame  is  dress- 
ing ;  she'll  be  down  in  three-quarters  of  an  hour."  No, 
madame  is  always  dressed,  always  ready  to  receive  ;  and  be- 
fore you  can  get  the  door-mat  before  your  eyes  she  is  in 
your  midst.  [Laughter.]  Then,  again,  the  Fan  ladies 
don't  go  to  church  to  see  what  each  other  has  got  on ;  and 
they  don't  go  back  home  and  describe  it  and  slander  it. 
[Laughter,] 

Such  is  the  dark  child  of  savagery,  as  to  every-day  toilet ; 
and  thus,  curiously  enough,  she  finds  a  point  of  con- 
tact with  the  fair  daughter  of  civilization  and  high  fashion 
— who  often  has  "  nothing  to  wear  ;  "  and  thus  these  widely- 
separated  types  of  the  sex  meet  upon  common  ground. 
Yes,  such  is  the  Fan  woman  as  she  appears  in  her  simple, 
unostentatious,  every-day  toilet  ;  but  on  state  occasions 
she  is  more  dressy.  At  a  banquet  she  wears  bracelets  ;  at 
a  lecture  she  wears  earrings  and  a  belt  ;  at  a  ball  she  wears 
stockings — and,  with  true  feminine  fondness  for  display, 
.she  wears  them  on  her  arms  [laughter]  ;  at  a  funeral  she 
wears  a  jacket  of  tar  and  ashes  [laughter]  ;  at  a  wedding 
the  bride  who  can  afford  it  puts  on  pantaloons.  [Laugh- 
ter.] Thus  the  dark  child  of  savagery  and  the  fair  daughter 
of  civilization  meet  once  more  upon  common  ground,  and 
these  two  touches  of  nature  make  their  whole  world  kin. 


WOMAN,    COD    HLESS    IIKR  !  227 

Now  we  will  consider  the  dress  of  our  other  type.  A  lar^^e 
part  of  the  daughter  of  civilization  is  her  dress— as  it  shouM 
be.  Some  civilized  women  would  lose  half  their  charm  with- 
out dress  ;  and  some  would  lose  all  of  it.  [  Laughter.] 
The  daughter  of  modern  civilization  dressed  at  her  utmost 
best,  is  a  marvel  of  exquisite  and  beautiful  art  and  expense. 
All  the  lands,  all  the  climes,  and  all  the  arts  are  laid  under 
tribute  to  furnish  her  forth.  Her  linen  is  from  ]5elfast,  her 
robe  is  from  Paris,  her  lace  is  from  Venice,  or  Si)ain,  or 
France ;  her  feathers  are  from  the  remote  regions  of 
Southern  Africa,  her  furs  from  the  remoter  home  of  the  ice- 
berg and  the  aurora,  her  fan  from  Japan,  her  diamonds  from 
Brazil,  her  bracelets  from  California,  her  pearls  from  Ceylon, 
her  cameos  from  Rome;  she  has  gems  and  trinkets  from 
buried  Pompeii,  and  others  that  graced  comely  Egyptian 
forms  that  have  been  dust  and  ashes  now  for  forty  centuries; 
her  watch  is  from  Geneva,  her  card-case  is  from  China,  her 
hair  is  from — from — I  don't  know  where  her  hair  is  from  ;  I 
never  could  find  out.  [Much  laughter.]  That  is,  her  other 
hair — her  public  hair,  her  Sunday  hair;  I  don't  mean  the 
hair  she  goes  to  bed  with.  [Laughter.]  Why,  you  ought  to 
know  the  hair  I  mean  ;  it's  that  thing  which  she  calls  a  switch, 
and  which  resembles  a  switch  as  much  as  it  resembles  a  brick- 
bat or  a  shotgun,  or  any  other  thing  which  you  correct 
people  with.  It's  that  thing  which  she  twists  and  then  coils 
round  and  round  her  head,  beehive  fashion,  and  then  tucks 
the  end  in  under  the  hive  and  harpoons  it  with  a  hairpin. 
And  that  reminds  me  of  a  trifle  :  any  time  you  want  to,  you 
can  glance  around  the  carpet  of  a  Pullman  car,  and  go  and 
pick  up  a  hairpin  ;  but  not  to  save  your  life  can  you  get  any 
woman  in  that  car  to  acknowledge  that  hairpin.  Now,  isn't 
that  strange  ?  But  it's  true.  The  woman  who  has  never 
swerved  from  cast-iron  veracity  and  fidelity  in  her  whole  life 
will,  when  confronted  with  this  crucial  test,  deny  her  hairpin. 
[Laughter.]  She  will  deny  that  hairpin  before  a  hundred 
witnesses.  I  have  stupidly  got  into  more  trouble  and  more 
hot  water  trying  to  hunt  up  theownerof  a  hairpin  in  a  Pull- 
man car  than  by  any  other  indiscretion  of  my  life. 

Well,  you  see  what  the  daughter  of  civilization  is  when 
she  is  dressed,  and  you  have  seen  what  the  daughter  of 
savagery  is  when  she  isn't.     Such  is  woman,  as  to  costume. 


228        SAMUEL  LAXGHORXE  CLEMENS 

I  come  now  to  consider  her  in  her  higher  and  nobler  aspects 
— as  mother,  wife,  widow,  grass-widow,  mother-in-hiw,  hired 
girl,  telegraph  operator,  telephone  helloer,  queen,  book-agent, 
wet-nurse,  stepmother,  boss,  professional  fat  woman,  profes- 
sional double-headed  woman,  professional  beauty,  and  so 
forth  and  so  on.      [Laughter.] 

We  will  simply  discuss  these  few — let  the  rest  of  the  sex 
tarry  in  Jericho  till  we  come  again.  First  in  the  list  of  right, 
and  first  in  our  gratitude,  comes  a  woman  who — why,  dear 
me,  I've  been  talking  three-quarters  of  an  hour !  I  beg  a 
thousand  pardons.  But  you  see,  yourselves,  that  I  had  a 
large  contract.  I  have  accomplished  something,  anyway. 
I  have  introduced  my  subject.  And  if  I  had  till  next  Fore- 
fathers' Day,  I  am  satisfied  that  I  could  discuss  it  as  ade- 
quately and  appreciatively  as  so  gracious  and  noble  a  theme 
deserves.  But  as  the  matter  stands  now,  let  us  finish  as  we 
began — and  say,  without  jesting,  but  with  all  sincerity, 
"  Woman — God  bless  her!  "     [Applause.] 


GROVER   CLEVELAND 


TRUE  DEMOCRACY 

[Speech  of  Ex-President  Grover  Cleveland,  at  a  banquet  given  in  Phila- 
delphia,  January  8,  1891,  by  the  Young  Men's  Democratic  Association 
of  that  city.  The  event  signalized  the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  New 
Orleans.  Samuel  Gustine  Thompson,  the  President  of  the  Association, 
was  in  the  chair,  and  proposed  the  toast  to  which  Mr.  Cleveland  spoke  : 
"  The  principles  of  True  Democracy  ;  they  are  enduring  because  they 
are  right,  and  invincible  because  they  are  just."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  : — As  I  rise  to  respond 
to  the  sentiment  which  has  been  assigned  to  me,  I  cannot 
avoid  the  impression  made  tipon  my  mind  by  the  announce- 
ment of  the  words  "  True  Democracy."  I  believe  them  to 
mean  a  sober  conviction  or  conclusion  touching  the  political 
topics  which,  formulated  into  political  belief  or  creed,  inspires 
a  patriotic  performance  and  the  duties  of  citizenship.  When 
illusions  are  dispelled,  when  misconceptions  are  rectified, 
and  when  those  who  guide  are  consecrated  to  truth  and 
duty,  the  ark  of  the  people's  safety  will  still  be  discerned  in 
the  keeping  of  those  who  hold  fast  the  principles  of  true 
democracy. 

These  principles  are  not  uncertain  nor  doubtful.  They 
comprise  equal  and  exact  justice  to  all  men  ;  peace,  com- 
merce, and  hence  friendship  with  all  nations — entangling 
alliance  with  none  ;  the  support  of  the  State  Governments 
in  all  their  rights  ;  the  preservation  of  the  General  Govern- 
ment in  its  whole  constitutional  vigor  ;  a  jealous  care  of  the 
right  of  election  by  the  people  ;  absolute  acquiescence  in 
the  decisions  of  the  majority ;  the  supremacy  of  the  civil 
over  the  military  authority ;  economy  in  the  public  expenses  ; 
the  honest  payment  of  our  debts  and  sacred  preservation  of 
the   public  faith;    the   encouragement  of  agriculture   and 

229 


230  GROVER    CLEVELAXD 

commerce  as  its  handmaid,  and  freedom  of  religion,  freedom 
of  the  press,  and  freedom  of  the  person. 

The  great  President  and  intrepid  democratic  leader  whom 
we  especially  honor  to-night  found  his  inspiration  and  guide 
in  these  principles. 

Not  all  who  have  followed  the  banner  have  been  able  by 
a  long  train  of  close  reasoning  to  demonstrate  as  an  abstrac- 
tion why  democratic  principles  are  best  suited  to  their  wants 
and  the  country's  good ;  but  they  have  known  and  felt  that 
as  their  government  was  established  for  the  people,  the 
principles  and  men  nearest  to  the  people  and  standing  for 
them  could  be  the  safest  trusted. 

Jackson  has  been  in  their  eyes  the  incarnation  of  the 
things  which  Jefferson  declared  ;  if  they  did  not  understand 
all  that  Jefferson  wrote,  they  saw  and  knew  what  Jackson 
did.  Those  who  insisted  upon  voting  for  Jackson  after  his 
death  felt  sure  that  whether  their  candidate  was  alive  or  dead, 
they  were  voting  the  ticket  of  true  democracy. 

The  devoted  political  adherent  of  Jackson,  who  after  his 
death  became  Involved  in  a  dispute  as  to  whether  his  hero 
had  gone  to  heaven  or  not,  was  prompted  by  democratic 
instinct  when  he  disposed  of  the  question  by  declaring  :  "  I 
tell  you,  sir,  that  if  Andrew  Jackson  has  made  up  his  mind 
to  go  to  heaven,  you  may  depend  upon  it,  he  is  there." 

Under  anti-democratic  encouragement  we  have  seen  a  con- 
stantly increasing  selfishness  attach  to  our  political  affairs. 
The  departure  from  the  sound  and  safe  theory  that  the 
people  should  support  the  Government  for  the  sake  of  the 
benefits  resulting  to  all  has  bred  a  sentiment,  manifesting  itself 
with  astounding  boldness,  that  the  Government  may  be  en- 
listed in  the  furtherance  and  advantage  of  private  interests, 
through  their  willing  agents  in  public  places.  Such  an 
abandonment  of  the  idea  of  patriotic  political  action  on  the 
part  of  these  interests  has  naturally  led  to  an  estimate  of  the 
people's  franchise  so  degrading  that  it  has  been  openly  and 
palpably  debauched  for  the  promotion  of  selfish  schemes. 
Nothing  could  be  more  hateful  to  true  and  genuine  de- 
mocracy  than  such  offences  against  our  free  institutions. 

In  several  of  the  States  the  honest  sentiment  of  the  party 
has  asserted  itself  in  the  support  of  every  plan  proposed  for 
the  ratification   of  this   terrible   wrong.     I   may  perhaps  be 


TRUE    DEMOCRACY  2^1 

permitted  to  express  a  hope  that  the  State  of  IVnns>'lvania 
will  not  long  remain  behind  her  sister  States  in  adoptin^r  an 
effective  plan  to  protect  her  ])eople's  suffrarrc.  ^ 

It  remains  to  say  that  in  the  midst  of  our  rej<. icing  and 
in  the  time  of  party  hope  and  expectation  we  shoufd  re- 
member that  the  way  of  riglit  and  justice  should  be  followed 
as  a  matter  of  duty  and  regardless  of  immediate  success. 
Above  all  things,  let  us  not  for  a  moment  forget  that  grave 
responsibilities  await  a  party  which  the  people  trust  T  and 
let  us  look  for  guidance  to  the  principles  of  "  True  Democ- 
racy" which  "are  enduring  because  they  are  right,  and  in- 
vincible because  they  are  just." 


WILLIAM  BOURKE   COCKRAN 


OUR  CONSTITUTIONAL  SYSTEM 

[Speech  of  William  Bourke  Cockran,  at  the  tenth  annual  banquet  of 
the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  Brooklyn,  December  21,  1S89. 
Willard  Bartlett,  President  of  the  society,  occupied  the  chair,  and  in- 
troduced Mr.  Cockran  to  respond  to  the  toast,  "Our  Constitutional 
System  as  tested  by  a  Century,"  as  follows  :  "  About  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury ago,  gentlemen,  when  I  was  at  the  Polytechnic  with  such  boys  as 
Seth  Low,  and  George  Abbott,  and  other  unknown  citizens,  there  used 
to  be  a  story  about  a  student  who  got  himself  into  disgrace  at  the  time 
of  examination  in  endeayoring  to  giye  the  solution  of  a  certain  problem 
and  state  the  reasons  for  the  solution  w  hich  he  gaye.  He  wrote  on  his  paper 
that  there  were  222,222  reasons,  but  he  had  time  to  state  only  one. 
Isow,  gentlemen,  there  are  almost  an  equal  number  of  reasons  why  New 
England  should  pay  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  Ireland.  I  will  not  endeayor 
to  state  them  all  to-night  ;  I  will  state  three  :  the  first  is  that,  indirectly, 
we  owe  the  beautiful  poem  of  ]\Irs.  Hemans  upon  the  landing  of  the 
Pilgrims  to  Ireland,  for  the  poet  was  of  Irish  parentage.  In  the  second 
place,  the  New  England  of  the  present  day  owes  a  great  deal  to  Ireland 
in  the  willingness  of  her  sons  to  take  possession  of  the  farms  which  the  de- 
scendants of  our  New  England  forefathers  deem  unworth}'  of  their  further 
occupation,  and  Irishmen  have  turned  man}-  of  those  farms  into  a  land 
flowing  with  milk  and  honey.  The  third  reason  you  Ayill  discover  after 
you  have  heard  my  friend  from  New  York,  the  Hon.  William  Bourke 
Cockran."  In  this  speech  Mr.  Cockran  alludes  to  two  previous  speeches, 
"The  Navy,"  delivered  by  Benjamin  F.  Tracy,  and  "The  Pilgrims  in 
Holland,"  delivered  by  Rev.  Dr.  A.  J.  F.  Behrends.] 

Mr.  Chairman  AND  Gentlemen  of  the  New  England 
Society: — I  might  be  permitted  to  add  a  fourth  reason, 
which  the  Irish  race  will  .soon  establish,  for  the  gratitude  of 
New  England.  Your  Chairman  has  told  you  that  they  have 
already  taken  possession  of  the  vacant  farms,  and  I  promise 
you  that  in  the  future  they  will  be  ready  to  take  possession 
of  the  vacant  offices. 

This  is  the  second  time  that  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  be 

232 


OUR  CONSTITUTIONAL  SYSTEM  233 

honored  by  an  invitation  to  a  dinner  of  the  New  England 
Society,  and  each  time  that  I  have  attended  the  festival  I 
have  become  impressed  with  a  more  enlarged  notion  of  the 
splendid  destiny  which  lies  before  this  Republic.  I  have 
watched  with  some  attention  and  curiosity  the  distinguishing 
features  of  this  feast,  as  contrasted  with  those  of  the  one  at 
which  I  was  permitted  to  assist  in  New  York ;  and  I  feel 
bound  to  add  my  expression  of  wonder  to  the  feeling  that 
might  fairly  be  attributed  to  a  returned  New  Englandcr,  if 
he  were  permitted  to  assist  at  this  banquet  to-night.  As  I 
watched  the  color  of  the  liquid  in  your  glasses,  I  have  be- 
come firmly  persuaded  that  such  is  the  strength  of  your  de- 
votion to  your  New  England  ancestors  you  have  become 
fully  resolved  that,  until  you  can  return  to  that  spring  which 
the  gentleman  from  Massachusetts  described  to-night,  you 
will  never  slake  your  thirst  with  water.  [Laughter.]  I 
have  been  highly  edified  with  much  that  has  been  said  here 
this  evening.  As  I  listened  to  the  distinguished  Secretary 
of  the  Navy,  I  was  filled  with  admiration  for  the  chivalrous 
spirit  which  prompted  him  to  recognize  the  good  work  of 
the  late  administration,  as  well  as  to  celebrate  the  good 
work  of  this,  in  the  rebuilding  of  our  navy.  [Applause.] 
I  became  deeply  imbued  with  the  conviction  that  these 
leviathans  of  the  deep  lately  constructed  by  American 
genius  will  not  be  the  only  vessels  which  will  leave  our  shores 
bearing  the  American  flag  into  foreign  climes.  The  same 
spirit,  the  same  genius  and  the  same  industry  which  have 
created  these  marvels  of  marine  architecture  will,  I  fondly 
believe,  resurrect  our  merchant  marine  [applause],  and 
within  a  few  years  restore  our  vessels  to  the  bosom  of  the 
deep,  refreshing  our  patriotism  as  we  once  more  feel  that 
the  white  sails  of  American  commerce  are  being  wafted 
by  every  breeze  that  blows  across  the  ocean  ;  that  the  prows 
of  our  vessels  are  parting  the  waters  of  every  harbor,  from 
the  Brama-Pootra  to  the  Hudson  ;  and  that  the  American 
flag,  flying  from  the  masthead  of  American  ships,  will  be  as 
familiar  a  sight  within  the  shadow  of  St.  Sophia  as  it  is 
within  the  shadow  of  Trinity  Church,  in  your  neighboring 
city.     [Applause.] 

And   I   may  say   that,  as  I  listened   with  the   utmost  in- 
terest to  the  eloquent  speech  of  Rev.  Dr.  Bchrcnds,  and  fol- 


234  WILLIAM    ROURKE    COCKRAN 

lowed  the  retrospect  which  he  made  of  the  history  of  the 
world,  from  the  eruption  of  the  Northern  barbarian  across 
the  provinces  of  Europe,  through  all  the  mutations  of  the 
warfare  of  the  Crusades,  through  the  Reformation,  and 
down  to  the  French  Revolution,  I  became  profoundly  im- 
pressed with  the  force  of  that  maxim  which  has  been  laid 
down  by  the  greatest  of  English  historians,  "  That  all 
human  institutions  are  but  phantoms,  disappearing  at  cock- 
crow ;  if  not  at  the  crow  of  this  cock,  then  at  the  crow  of 
that  cock  ;"  and  that  the  governments  that  seem  to  us  the 
most  durable  and  the  strongest  are  destined  some  day  to  dis- 
appear in  noise,  disaster  and  confusion,  into  that  womb  of 
time  in  which  are  engulfed  the  Merovingian  kings,  the  dy- 
nasties that  sprung  into  existence  upon  the  dissolution  of 
the  Carlovingian  Empire,  and  all  the  kingdoms  and  the 
principalities  that  even  one  hundred  years  ago  covered  the 
face  of  Western  Europe.  Now,  like  all  maxims  of  similar 
character,  this  is  to  some  extent  sound,  and  to  some  extent 
unsound.  Governmental  forms  are  indeed  perishable. 
Nations  change  their  names,  their  boundaries,  their  creeds 
and  their  languages.  The  altars  of  yesterday  are  but  the 
curios  of  to-day.  The  temples  that  have  been  raised  to  the 
worships  that  have  now  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the 
earth  but  move  our  wonder  that  beliefs  so  simple  and  so 
transparent  should  have  nerved  the  minds  of  men  to  raise 
such  marvels  of  architecture.  But  though  creeds  and  dynas- 
ties and  languages  are  ephemeral,  the  principles  of  justice 
are  eternal ;  and  this  Government,  founded  and  built  upon 
them,  will,  I  believe,  last  to  the  end  of  time.     [Applause.] 

I  have  been  given  to-night  the  toast  of  "  Our  Constitu- 
tional System  as  tested  by  a  Century."  What  is  this  Con- 
stitutional System  ?  Does  it  consist  of  executive  officers, 
clothed  with  extraordinary  powers,  beside  which  the  meagre 
prerogative  of  constitutional  monarchs  shrink  into  insignifi- 
cance ?  Does  it  consist  of  a  judiciary  armed  with  power  over 
life,  limb  and  property  ?  Does  it  consist  of  legislators,  that 
they  may  be  enabled  and  authorized  to  prefix  the  title 
"  Honorable  "  to  their  names?  Does  it  consist  of  the  mere 
parchment  upon  which  certain  figures  may  be  traced  and 
certain  words  may  be  read  ?  No  !  Our  Constitutional 
System  consists  of  the  application  of  the  eternal  principles 


OUR   COXSTITUTIOXAL   SYSTEM  235 

of  justice  to  the  relations  of  men  to  each  other  unckT  f)ur 
social  compact,  [Apphause.]  In  the  provisions  that  no  man 
can  be  deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property  without  due  pro- 
cess of  law;  that  all  men  shall  take  an  equal  part  in  the 
affairs  of  government  ;  that  the  privilege  of  habeas  corpus 
shall  never  be  denied ;  that  no  private  property  shall  be 
taken  for  public  uses  without  proper  compensation,  you 
have  the  essence  of  our  Constitutional  System,  and  you  have 
the  principles  of  justice  made  the  birthright  of  the  American 
citizen,  beyond  the  reach  of  any  disturbance  from  any  source 
whatever.  [Applause.]  You  have  the  rule  of  equity  applied 
to  your  every-day  existence.  You  have  rights  guaranteed 
to  every  citizen  which  the  strongest  may  not  invade,  which 
the  weakest  is  free  to  invoke  for  his  own  protection. 

And  these  principles  are  not  of  yesterday,  they  are  not 
of  recent  discovery.  Their  origin  cannot  be  traced  by  his- 
tory. Their  source  is  lost  in  the  mists  of  antiquity.  Those 
same  principles  flourished  under  the  ancient  English  com- 
mon law,  and  'twas  but  the  declaration  of  them  that  was 
contained  in  the  great  charter  extracted  from  John  at  Runny- 
mead.  Through  the  darkness  of  years  we  can  discern  the 
harbinger  of  the  common  law,  when  Alfred  reconstructed, 
a  thousand  years  ago,  the  ancient  English  system  of  jurispru- 
dence, and  defended  it  from  foreign  invasion  and  domestic 
tumult.  These  principles  existed  and  were  recognized 
among  the  rugged  inhabitants  of  the  Northern  forests,  when 
dastard  rulers  had  denied  their  existence  and  refused  them 
recognition  in  the  crowded  cities  and  in  the  palaces  of 
Europe.  They  lived,  they  flourished,  they  came  across  the 
impassable  frontiers  of  the  northern  morass ;  they  were 
borne  into  the  farthest  parts  of  Europe;  against  King  and 
Court  they  were  asserted,  and  they  lived  to  nerve  the  arms 
and  fire  the  hearts  of  the  oppressed  till  they  achieved 
triumph  amid  the  wreck  of  dynasties  and  the  falling  heads 
of  tyrants. 

If  I  were  asked  what  it  is  that  is  significant  in  your  festi- 
val to-night  I  would  answer  that  it  was  the  commemoration 
of  the  carrying  of  these  eternal  principles  of  justice  and 
sound  government  across  the  sea  and  the  planting  of  them 
in  American  soil.  I  would  tell  you  that  that  first  agreement 
in  the   cabin  of  the   "  Mayflower,"   that  first  charter  which 


236  WILLIAM    BOURKE    COCKRAN 

was  established  as  the  rule  which  would  govern  these  Pil- 
grims upon  their  landing  on  the  bleak  and  desolate  shore  of 
Massachusetts,  was  the  germ  of  our  Constitutional  System — 
was  the  seed  which,  though  cast  in  a  rocky  and  forbidding 
soil,  has  grown  and  flourished  until  it  has  become  a  tree 
whose  branches  and  shade  have  overspread  this  continent, 
whose  fruits  are  culled  by  the  eager  hands  of  the  patriotic 
all  over  the  world,  that  they  may  be  planted  in  other  soil, 
and  bear  fruit  in  other  climes.     [Applause.] 

The  significance  of  this  festival  is,  then,  the  birth  of  our 
"Constitutional  System."  But,  sons  of  New  England,  con- 
stitutions are  more  than  paper  documents.  I  doubt  if  there 
has  been  an  invention  of  human  genius  more  often  copied 
than  our  Constitutional  System.  I  doubt  if  there  has  been 
anything  which  has  been  so  often  created,  and  so  often  vio- 
lated, as  a  new  constitution  in  other  countries.  We  have 
seen  well  within  the  lines  of  recent  history  a  great  nation 
honestly  bent  on  achieving  independence  and  free  institu- 
tions, conducting  a  heroic  and  successful  struggle  against  a 
despotism  of  800  years ;  emancipating  itself,  against  odds 
which  no  man  thought  at  the  beginning  could  be  overcome, 
when  liberty  was  in  its  hands  framing  a  constitution  with 
more  elaborate  declarations  of  rights  even  than  ours  pos- 
sess ;  and  yet,  within  a  few  years  the  whole  system  went 
down  in  ruin,  disaster,  tyranny  and  universal  distress. 

It  is  not  any  constitutional  system  that  maybe  reduced  to 
paper  that  is  the  genius  of  our  Constitution.  The  noblest, 
the  strongest  declaration  of  rights  may  be  mere  maxims 
discarded  at  pleasure.  It  is  the  genius  of  a  people  that 
makes  a  constitutional  system.  That  spirit  which  took  ex- 
pression in  the  cabin  of  the  "  Mayflower"  is  the  spirit  which 
has  dominated  this  land  to  this  day,  and  given  us  this 
Republic,  the  marvel  of  the  world,  destined  to  be  the  source 
of  enlightenment  to  all  Christendom,  for  all  generations  to 
come.  We  have,  under  our  Constitutional  System,  achieved 
greatness ;  but  more  than  that,  we  have  achieved  rational 
freedom.  We  have  made  a  majority  all  powerful  for  every 
salutary  purpose.  In  the  powers  that  we  confer,  we  keep 
alive  the  spirit  of  liberty.  In  the  limitations  which  we  place 
upon  that  power,  we  do  even  more  to  preserve  the  genius 
of  freedom  to  our  people. 


OUR    CONSTITUTIONAL   SYSTEM  237 

If  we  are  asked  what  have  been  the  practical  effects  of 
this  Constitutional  System,  we  have  but  to  tell  our 
questioner  to  look  around  him.  In  the  sight  which  will 
meet  his  eye  will  be  found  the  answer  to  his  question.  On 
every  hand  we  see  liberty  and  order,  prosperity  and  happi- 
ness. We  see  fields  radiant  with  prosperity,  homes  on 
every  hillside,  where  the  fires  of  liberty  are  kept  alive  on 
the  hearthstones  ;  neither  fortress  nor  arsenal  casting  its 
grim  shadow  across  the  highway ;  laws  dictated  by  public 
opinion  and  obeyed  by  universal  consent.  A  nation  is 
reunited  after  a  terrible  conflict ;  and  were  our  soil  to  be 
molested  by  foreign  invasion,  throughout  the  whole  country, 
in  the  North  and  in  the  South,  in  village  and  in  hamlet,  a 
million  citizens  would  become  soldiers,  a  million  swords 
would  leap  from  their  scabbards ;  a  million  breasts  would 
be  bared  to  the  shot  of  the  foe  ;  a  million  hands  would  be 
prepared  to  wipe  out  in  blood  any  insult  that  might  be 
offered  to  the  integrity  of  our  flag. 

Nor  is  it  alone  in  material  prosperity  that  the  triumph  of 
our  Constitutional  System  is  apparent.  It  is  equally  proven 
by  the  moral  development  of  our  people.  Wealth  has  been 
enjoyed  by  other  nations,  and  wealth  belongs  to  this  Re- 
public. Freedom,  too,  has  been  known  in  this  world,  and 
freedom  is  the  corner-stone  of  our  Government.  But  here 
alone  have  we  solved  the  problem  that  freedom  and 
wealth  are  consistent;  that  property  may  be  secure  while 
the  largest  power  is  confided  to  the  hands  of  the  masses  ; 
that  the  virtue  of  the  people  is  a  better  shield  for  the  secur- 
ity of  the  citizen  than  armed  force  or  uniformed  troops,  and 
that  the  American  spirit  is  the  truest  protection  to  life  and 
to  property. 

I  have  listened  with  surpassing  pleasure  to  the  liberal  sen- 
timents which  were  expressed  by  Rev.  Dr.  Behrends,  when 
he  was  discussing  this  banquet  even  as  a  Protestant  festival, 
and  I  may  say  in  reply  to  him  that  I  believe  I  voice  the 
sentiment  of  every  person  who  kneels  before  any  altar  in 
this  country  when  I  say  that,  however  different  may  be  the 
roads  on  which  we  start,  we  all  believe  that  we  may  hope  to 
come  together  at  the  gates  of  Heaven.  I  may  say  that,  no 
matter  what  the  character  of  the  edifice  whose  doors  will  be 
opened  for  worship  to-morrow,  whether  the  scrviQ^s  be  con- 


238  WILLIAM    BOURKE    COCKRAN 

ducted  by  robed  priest  or  by  plainly-dressed  preacher; 
whether  the  petitions  rise  from  marble  altar  or  from  plain 
reading-desk,  wherever  through  stained-glass  windows  the 
sun  of  Heaven  shall  shine  down  upon  the  heads  of  worship- 
pers to-morrow,  one  prayer  will  rise  to  God  alike  from  the 
hearts  of  all,  and  that  prayer  will  be  for  the  safety,  security 
and  prosperity  of  this  Government,  of  this  land,  and  of  its 
Constitutional  System.     [Cheers.] 

It  may  be  that  all  things  human  are  ephemeral  ;  it  may 
be  that  this  Government,  which  we  love  so  well  and  in 
whose  future  we  believe  so  deeply,  will  be  found  at  the 
dawn  of  some  day  to  have  disappeared.  And  yet  I  feel 
justified  in  believing  that,  as  the  principles  of  justice  are 
eternal,  the  government  which  is  founded  upon  them  will 
last  forever.  Not  as  she  stands  to-day  ;  I  know  that  noth- 
ing in  nature  can  remain  inert ;  but  I  believe  she  will  live  to 
the  end  of  time,  forever  progressive,  ever  freer,  ever  greater, 
ever  stronger,  ever  more  durable.  [Applause.]  I  believe 
that  with  each  successive  force  which  is  liberated  from 
nature  ;  with  each  new  development  of  science  ;  with  each 
new  element  that  may  enter  into  the  daily  lives  of  men, 
creating  vast  additions  to  our  wealth,  annihilating  space  and 
multiplying  the  fields  of  industry,  our  Constitutional  System 
will  be  found  elastic  enough  to  include  them,  strong  enough 
to  regulate  them,  and  that  here  in  these  two  cities,  lying 
side  by  side,  at  the  very  gateway  of  Western  commerce, 
linked  together  now  by  physical  bonds  as  well  as  by  com- 
mon ends  and  aims,  will  ever  flourish  the  truest  and  strong- 
est types  of  American  democracy,  maintaining  institutions 
which  will  forever  stimulate  patriotism,  strengthen  virtue 
and  illuminate  the  world  with  the  light  of  freedom,  reveal- 
ing  liberty,  hand  in  hand  with  order  and  prosperity. 
[Cheers.] 


JOSEPH   BULLOCK  COGHLAN 


THE  BATTLE  OF  MANILA 

[Speech  of  Captain  Joseph  B.  Co.<,'hlan,  at  a  banquet  of  the  Union 
League  Club  of  New  York  City,  April  21,  1899.  The  banquet  was  ^iven 
in  honor  of  Captain  Coghlan  and  the  officers  of  the  U.S.  Cruiser  "  Ral- 
eigh." Elihu  Root  presided,  and  said  in  introducing  Captain  Coglilan: 
"  Behind  the  men  at  ^Manila  were  the  ideas  of  liberty,  justice  and  equal 
rights  to  all  people.  They  did  their  duty,  not  thinking  of  theories  or 
future  governments  ;  they  had  their  orders,  orders  that  led  into  the  jaws 
of  death,  and  they  went  in  to  do  their  w-ork  thinkingof  their  work  alone. 
But  behind  them  were  the  great  ideas  that  America  represents  in  the 
progress  of  mankind.  Greater  than  we  know  or  realize  was  the  work 
done  by  the  brave  sailors  who  followed  Dewey  in  the  harbor  of  INIanila. 
And  now  I  ask  3'ou  to  join  me  in  drinking  the  health  of  Captain  Coghlan 
and  the  officers  of  the    '  Raleigh.'  "] 

Mr.  President  and  GentlejMen  of  the  Union 
League  : — I  thought  I  came  here  on  the  condition  that  I  was 
to  do  no  talking,  I  get  scared  to  death  when  called  upon  to 
speak,  and  sometimes  I  don't  say  Avhat  I  want  to.  So  you 
will  excuse  me  for  everything  out  of  the  way  that  I  say  to- 
night. I  was  almost  breathless  as  I  listened  to  your  Pres- 
ident's speech.  The  more  he  spoke  the  more  I  thought : 
"For  God's  sake,  can  he  mean  us  ?  "  [Laughter.]  Ashe 
went  on  and  I  recognized  the  name  of  our  beloved  chief, 
Admiral  Dewey  [applause],  I  knew  he  was  simply  patting 
the  admiral  over  our  shoulders,  and  I  thought  to  myself  : 
"  He  can't  do  too  much  of  that  to  suit  me."  [Applause.] 
We  feel  that  we  may  be  congratulated  on  our  home-coming  ; 
not  for  what  we  have  done,  but  for  having  served  under 
Admiral  Dewey.  We  love  him  and  give  him  all  the  credit 
for  what  was  done  by  the  American  fleet  at  Manila,  If  we 
thought  it  was  possible  by  accepting  this  kind  reception  to- 
night to  take  away  from  him  one  iota  of  this  credit,  we 
would  feel  that  we  were  doing  wrong.     [Applause.] 

239 


240  JOSEPH    RULLOCK    COGHLAN 

Wc  were  with  Dewey  from  the  start  to  the  finish,  and  on 
eacii  day  we  learned  more  to  love  and  respect  him.  The 
more  we  knew  him,  the  more  we  knew  that  our  country's 
honor  was  safe  in  his  hands  and  that  nothing  in  which  he 
was  engaged  but  would  redound  to  the  credit  of  our  country. 
[Applause.]  During  the  days  after  the  great  fight  was 
over,  he  suffered  the  most  outrageous  nagging  ;  on,  on  it 
went,  day  after  day,  rubbing  clean  through  the  flesh  to  the 
bone,  but  he  always  held  himself  and  others  up.  I  tell  you 
it  was  magnificent.  [Prolonged  applause.]  I  must  tell  you 
of  an  incident  which  I  think  will  be  of  interest.  Our  friend 
[sarcastically].  Admiral  von  Diedrichs,  sent  an  officer  to 
complain  of  the  restrictions  placed  upon  him  by  Admiral 
Dewey.  I  happened  to  be  near  by  at  the  time,  and  I  over- 
heard the  latter  part  of  the  conversation  between  this  officer 
and  our  chief.  I  shall  never  forget  it,  and  I  want  the  people 
of  the  United  States  to  know  what  Admiral  Dewey  said  that 
day.  "  Tell  your  admiral,"  said  he,  "  his  ships  must  stop 
where  I  say."  "  But  we  fly  a  flag,"  said  the  officer.  "  Those 
flags  can  be  bought  at  half-a-dollar  a  yard  anywhere,"  said 
the  admiral,  and  there  wasn't  a  bit  of  fun  in  his  face  when 
he  said  it  either.  "  Any  one  can  fly  that  flag,"  he  con- 
tinued. "  The  whole  Spanish  fleet  might  come  on  us  with 
those  colors  if  they  wanted  to.  Therefore  I  must  and  will 
stop  you.  Tell  your  admiral  I  am  blockading  here.  I  am 
tired  of  the  character  of  his  conduct.  I  have  made  it  as 
lenient  as  possible  for  him.  Now  the  time  has  arrived  when 
he  must  stop.  Listen  to  me.  Tell  your  admiral  that  the 
slightest  infraction  of  these  orders  by  himself  or  his  officers 
will  mean  but  one  thing.  Tell  him  what  I  say — it  will  mean 
war.  Make  no  mistake  when  I  say  that  it  will  mean  war. 
If  you  people  are  ready  for  war  with  the  United  States^ 
you  can  have  it  in  five  minutes."  [Tremendous  applause, 
followed  by  more  cheers  for  Dewey.] 

I  am  free  to  admit  that  the  admiral's  speech  to  that  of- 
ficer took  my  breath  away.  As  that  officer  left  to  go  back 
to  his  ship,  he  said  to  an  American  officer  whose  name  I  do 
not  recall:  "  I  think  your  admiral  does  not  exactly  under- 
.stand."  "  Oh,  yes  he  does,"  said  the  American  officer. 
"  Me  not  only  understands,  but  he  means  every  word  he 
says."     That    was  the   end    of  that  bosh.     After  that  the 


THE    BATTLE    OF    MANILA  2-}  I 

Germans  didn't  dare  to  breathe  more  than  four  times  in 
succession  without  asking  the  admiral's  permission.  I  don't 
know  what  I  can  talk  to  you  about  tliat  will  interest  you 
unless  I  tell  you  some  of  our  experiences  at  Manila,  and  I 
guess  you  know  most  of  that  already.  [Cries  of  "Tell  us 
about  the  fight !  "] 

Well,  I  will.  We  held  our  last  consultation  at  the  dinner 
hour  the  night  before  the  fight,  and  the  admiral  said  that 
we  were  going  in  that  night.  I  don't  think  any  of  us  ate 
much  dinner.  We  went  in  in  a  calm  sea,  although  we  were 
not  so  calm  ourselves.  About  midnight  we  became  a  little 
anxious  because  we  had  arrived  at  a  point  where  we  had  been 
informed  there  were  lots  of  torpedoes  anchored  for  us.  Now 
torpedoes  are  all  very  well  for  the  storehouse,  but  they  are 
bad  things  to  have  floating  round  a  ship.  I've  shot  some 
myself,  and  they  sometimes  show  an  inclination  to  turn 
round  and  come  back  after  you've  started  them.  They're 
a  loving  sort  of  animal,  and  seem  to  hate  to  leave  you. 
[Laughter.]  But  when  we  got  to  the  entrance  and  the 
"  Olympia  "  went  through  without  being  blown  up,  we  felt 
better  ;  we  felt  positively  brave  when  the  "  Baltimore  "  went 
through  all  right,  and  were  ready  to  go  right  through  a  grave- 
yard ourselves  then.  You  see  the  men  at  the  batteries  were 
sleeping  some  four  miles  away  that  night,  and  they  didn't 
get  to  their  posts  until  the  poor  old  "Raleigh  "  came  along. 
I  saw  a  flash  and  turning  to  an  officer  I  said  :  "  Hallo,  what's 
that  ?  "  He  told  me  that  was  the  second  time  he  had  noticed 
it,  and  asked  if  he  should  fire.  I  told  him  not  to,  as  it  was 
probably  our  friends  the  insurgents  signalling  to  us  ;  but 
when  a  shot  came  along  a  moment  later,  I  knew  better. 
Then  a  second  shot  came,  and  it  was  in  response  to  this  that 
the  "  Raleigh  "  fired  her  first  gun.  It  was  the  first  shot  fired 
by  an  American  ship  at  Manila,  and  there  is  the  man  sitting 
over  there  that  fired  it.  [Captain  Coghlan  pointed  to  Ensign 
Provost  Babin  who  sat  several  ch.airs  away  from  him.  En- 
sign Babin  was  obliged  to  stand  up  and  bow  several  times 
in  response  to  prolonged  applause.] 

I  tell  you  we  were  all   on   the  qui  vive  that   night ;  our 

orders  were  to  go  in   and  anchor,  eat   breakfast  at  da^dight, 

and  wipe  the  Spanish  fleet   off  the  face  of  the  earth  ;  but  in 

the  darkness  we  overran  our  reckoning,  and  at  daylight  we 

16 


V 


242  JOSEPH    BULLOCK   COG H LAN 

found  ourselves  right  under  the  batteries  of  Manila.  In  the 
tropics  the  daylight  conies  like  a  flash,  and  this  was  a  most 
beautiful  morning.  Our  friends  the  enemy  on  shore  opened 
upon  us,  and  instead  of  the  anticipated  signal  to  take  break- 
fast, the  signal  came  from  the  flag-ship  "  Engage  the  enemy." 
This  is  where  the  old  man  came  in.  His  whole  pre-arranged 
plan  had  to  be  changed  in  a  second.  We  all  turned  and 
stood  towards  the  Spanish  fleet,  taking  the  fire  of  the  bat- 
teries, without  response,  for  thirty-seven  minutes.  When 
we  finally  got  into  the  position  we  wanted,  we  opened  up 
and  you  know  what  followed.  We  kept  at  it  for  two  hours 
and  a  half,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  there  was  no  Spanish 
fleet.     [Applause.] 

This  is  a  good  time  for  me  to  correct  a  statement  which  I 
understand  has  been  most  persistently  sjoread  here  at  home, 
that  we  were  short  of  ammunition.  It  was  reported  to 
Admiral  Dewey  that  certain  classes  of  guns  were  short.  He 
asked  me  about  it,  because  there  were  many  guns  of  this 
class  on  my  ship.  I  told  him  that  we  hadn't  used  thirty-five 
per  cent,  of  this  ammunition  in  the  whole  fight,  and  Captain 
Gridley — rest  his  soul  ! — reported  the  same  thing.  We  were 
not  short  of  ammunition  at  any  time.  The  report  that  we 
were  has  gone  out ;  but  the  proof  that  we  were  not  has 
never  been  told.  Why,  we  could  have  fought  two  battles 
that  day  without  inconvenience.  Well,  the  end  of  the  battle 
found  us  in  fine  shape.  The  admiral  told  us  we  had  better 
go  in  and  clean  up  the  rest  of  our  work,  so  we  steamed 
toward  the  shore  and  simply  wiped  out  the  batteries.  After 
it  was  all  over  we  felt  "bully;"  though  I  cannot  say  the 
same  for  the  poor  devils  on  the  other  side.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  to  our  utter  amazement  we  saw  Admiral  Dewey 
steaming  alone  right  under  the  batteries.  I  tell  you  when  I 
saw  him  there  in  that  position  I  went  right  after  him  with 
the  "  Raleigh  "  as  fast  as  I  could.  [Applause.]  Fortunately 
nothing  happened.  I  agree  with  our  President  that  it  is  given 
to  every  man  to  be  brave  ;  but  I  tell  you  given  to  few  men 
is  the  bravery  of  our  admiral.  He  not  only  has  the  physical 
courage  but  also  the  moral  courage  to  do  anything  in  God's 
green  world  that  he  thinks  will  advance  the  interests  of  our 
country.     [Prolonged  applause.] 

When  he  wished  us  to  do  anything,  he  did  not  hamper  us 


THE    P.ATTT.K    OF    ^lAXILA  243 

with  written  orders— he  just  tokl  us  to  do  it,  and  we  did  it. 
He  had  the  courage  to  try  anything  that  was  possible  to  be 
done  ;  and  we  had  the  courage  to  try  to  do  anything  he  said 
could  be  done.  The  North  and  South  fought  together  at 
Manila  Bay,  as  they  did  in  Cuba;  and  I  tefl  you  together 
they  are  invincible.  Not  only  is  our  country  one  to-day, 
but  I  tell  you  the  English-spealdng  race  is  one  also.  [Ap- 
plause.]  The  English  people  are  with  us  heart  and  soul, 
and  they  were  with  us  before  we  went  to  Manila,  as  I  will 
show  you.  On  the  wharves  at  Hong  Kong  before  we  started 
for  Manila,  strange  officers  met  us  and  introduced  them- 
selves, which  you  will  agree  is  a  very  un-English  proceeding. 
They  wished  us  all  manner  of  luck.  One  said  to  me  :  ''  By 
Jove,  if  you  fellows  don't  wipe  them  out,  don't  come  back 
to  us,  because  we  won't  speak  to  you."  Afterward  when 
we  went  back  to  Hong  Kong,  one  of  those  English  officers 
said  to  me  :  "  By  Jove,  we  never  gave  you  credit  for  style, 
but  my  !  you  can  shoot !  "     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

And  now  that  is  all  that  I  have  to  say,  except  to  ask  a 
favor.  I  want  you  to  join  me  in  drinking  the  health  of  our 
chief.  Admiral  Dewey. 


[At  the  close  of  liis  speech,  Captain  Coghlan  was  called  upon  to  re- 
cite a  burlesque  poem  entitled  "  Iloch  !  der  Kaiser."  His  compliance 
with  this  request  resulted  in  some  diplomatic  comment  afterwards.  In 
its  original  form  (as  appended  herewith)  the  poem  contains  thirteen 
stanzas,  but  eight  only  were  recited  on  the  above  occasion,  the  omitted 
portions  being  stanzas  2,  6,  7,  8  and  9.  The  verses  were  written  under 
peculiar  circumstances  in  Montreal  in  October,  1S97.  They  were  in- 
spired by  a  speech  of  William  II,  Emperor  of  Germany,  upon  the  divine 
right  of  kings  and  his  own  special  mission  upon  earth.  At  that  time 
A.  M.  R.  Gordon,  a  Scotchman  by  birth,  whose  real  name  was  A. 
McGregor  Rose,  was  a  member  of  the  "Montreal  Herald  "  staff.  He 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  writing  verses  upon  different  subjects,  and  was 
looked  upon  as  a  bright  fellow.     The  city  editor,  turning   to  him,  said  : 

"  Give  us  a  poem,  Gordon,  on  the  Emperor."  In  less  than  an  hour's 
time,  he  turned  out  thirteen  verses,  which  w-ere  entitled  by  him, 
"  Kaiser  &  Co."  not  "  Hoch  !  der  Kaiser."  The  matter  was  sent  to  the 
printer  just  as  it  was  written.  By  some  mistake  the  foreman  of  the  com- 
posing-room picked  up  only  eight  stanzas  in  type,  leaving  the  other 
five  on  the  galley.  Gordon,  who  was  very  particular  about  his  matter 
being  strict!}'  correct,  got  one  of  the  first  copies  off  the  press.  He  at 
once  saw  the  mistake  and  the  form  was  recast,  not,  however,  before  a 
few  hundred  had  been  sent  into  the  mailing  room  for  the  foreign  mails. 
This  is  why  only  eight  verses  were  copied  in  the  papers  which  printed 


2^4  JOSICPH    P,ULLOCK    COGHLAN 

the  poem  at  th--  time.     In  the  second  edition  it  was  given  in  full  and 
signed,  A.  .M.  K.  Gordon.] 

IIOCII  !  DER   KAISER. 

Der  Kaiser  of  dis  Faterland 
Und  Gott  on  high  all  dings  command, 
Ye  two— ach  !  don'd  you  understand? 
Meinself — und  Gott. 

He  reigns  in  Heafen  und  always  shall, 
Und  meinown  Embire  don'd  vasshmall. 
Ein  noble  bair  I  dinks  you  call 

Meinself — und  Gott. 

Vile  some  men  sing  der  power  divine 
Mein  .soldiers  sing  "  Die  Wacht  am  Rhein," 
Uud  drink  der  health  in  Rhenish  wine, 
Of  Me— und  Gott. 

Dere's  France— she  svaggers  all  aroundt, 
She's  ausgespielt,  of  no  aggoundt, 
To  much  ve  dinks  she  don'd  amouudt, 
Meinself — und  Gott. 

She  vill  not  dare  to  fight  again, 
But  if  she  shouldt,  I'll  show  her  blain, 
Dot  Elsass,  und  (in  French)  Lorraine 
Are  mein — by  Gott ! 

Von  Bismarck  vas  a  man  of  might 
Und  dought  he  was  glear  oud  of  sight, 
But  ach  !  he  vas  nicht  goot  to  fight 
Mit  Me— und  Gott. 

Ve  knock  him  like  ein  man  of  sdraw, 
Ve  let  him  know  whose  vill  vas  law, 
Und  dot  ve  don'd  vould  sdand  his  jaw, 
Meinself — und  Gott. 

Ve  send  him  outdt  in  big  disgrace, 
Ve  gif  him  insuldt  to  his  face, 
Uud  put  Caprivi  in  his  place, 

Meinself — und  Gott. 

Und  ven  Caprivi  get  svelled  hedt 
Ve  very  bromjjlly  on  him  set, 
Und  toldt  him  to  get  up  and  get, 
Mwinself — und  Gott. 


THK    r.ATTLlv    OK    MANILA  2^5 

Dere's  Grandma  dinks  slu-'s  nit-hl  shniall  l)ier, 
Mit  Boers  und  such  she  interfere, 
She'll  learn  none  owns  dis  hemisphere 
But  Me— und  Gott. 

She  dinks,  good  frau,  some  ships  she's  got, 
Und  soldiers  mit  der  scarlet  goat, 
Ach  !  we  could  knock  'em— poof  !  like  dot. 
Meinself— und  Gott. 

In  dimes  of  1)eace  brcpare  for  wars, 
I  bear  der  helm  und  shpear  of  Mars, 
Und  care  not  for  den  dousand  Czars, 
Meinself— und  Gott. 

In  fact,  I  humor  efery  vhim, 
Mit  aspect  dark  und  visage  grim 
Gott  pulls  mit  me,  und  I  mit  I  Tim, 
Meiufc«lf — uud  GotU 


LORD   COLERIDGE 


HENRY   IRVING'S  VERSATILITY 

[Speech  of  John  Duke  Coleridge,  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England,  atq 
banquet  given  to  Henry  Irving  [now  Sir  Henry  Irving]  London,  July  4, 
1SS3,  in  view  of  his  impending  departure  for  a  professional  tour  of 
America.     Lord  Coleridge  occupied  the  chair.] 

]VIy  Lords,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : — We  are  about, 
as  you  know,  to  send  our  honored  guest,  Mr.  Irving,  on  a 
tour  through  the  great  RepubHc  of  America,  and  we  have 
invited  him  to  dinner  on  the  fourth  of  July,  the  day,  now 
more  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  when  the  American  Re- 
pubHc broke  away  from  this  country,  and  rejected  the  yoke 
which  the  Ministers  of  George  the  Third  attempted  to  im- 
pose upon  the  necks  of  a  free  people.  [Cheers. J  I  hope 
that  it  is  not  an  unbecoming  toast,  I  hope  it  is  not  an  un- 
%velcome  tribute  to  a  great  and  friendly  nation  [cheers], 
that  it  is  on  its  birthday  we  should  drink  its  health  ;  a  birth- 
day, like  most  birthdays,  full  of  pain  and  sorrow  to  its 
mother,  but  of  pain  and  sorrow  which  have  long  since 
passed  away,  to  be  followed  by  feelings  of  unmingled  pride 
in  the  magnificence  of  the  offspring  and  in  the  yet  more 
magnificent  development  which  the  future  will  undoubtedly 
reveal.     [Cheers.] 

We  know  that  that  great  nation  has  as  its  head  an  elected 
president — a  man,  for  the  time  that  he  fills  the  office,  more 
powerful  than  the  most  despotic  monarch,  because  he  rep- 
resents the  irresistible  will  of  the  great  nation  which  has 
elected  him  [cheers]  ;  the  chief,  for  the  time,  of  a  vast  Eng- 
lish-speaking people,  the  friend  of  our  sovereign  [cheers]  ; 
the  successor  of  a  man  whose  life  was  pure,  whose  aims  were 
noble,  whose  death  bound   together,  in  the  ties  of  a  com- 

246 


HENRY    IRVING  S   VERSATILITY  247 

mon  honor  and  of  a  common  sorrow,  the  hearts  of  America 
and  Enj^land.  [Cheers.  |  I  give  you  the  "American  Re- 
pubHc,  and  the  President  of  the  United  States,"  [Cheers.] 
My  lords,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  have  now  to  ask  you  to 
drink  the  toast  for  the  purpose  of  drinking  which  we  have 
all  come  together  here  to-night,  [Loud  cheers.]  And  for 
your  misfortune  and  my  own  it  is  necessary  that  the  toast 
should  be  prefaced  by  what  is  called  a  speech,  [Laughter,] 
An  after-dinner  speech,  according  to  a  well-known  recipe, 
should  be  made  up  of  a  joke,  a  platitude,  and  a  quotation. 
[Laughter,]  As  for  jokes,  I  am  too  old  and  have  got  too  dull 
to  make  them,  [Laughter,]  As  for  platitudes,  you  will 
have  plenty  of  them  before  I  have  done.  [Laughter,]  And 
then  for  a  quotation.  Well,  I  think  I  must  introduce  you 
to  one  that  none  of  you  have  ever  heard — quite  absolutely 
new  [laughter],  entirely  unhackneyed  [laughter],  from  out  of 
the  unknown  play  of  an  obscure  poet : — 

"  All  the  world's  a  stage, 
And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players. 
They  have  their  exits  and  their  entrances  ; 
And  one  man  in  his  time  plays  many  i^arts." 

[Laughter  and  cheers.] 

If  it  be  true  that  all  men  and  women  are  players,  by  a 
slight  inaccuracy  of  logic  it  follows  that  all  players  are  men 
and  women  [laughter],  and  that  therefore  a  great  player 
ought  to  be  a  great  man.  [Cheers.]  At  all  events,  it  is 
certain  that  he  ought  to  be  able  to  appreciate  great  qualities  ; 
to  delineate,  so  that  men  may  understand  and  admire,  a 
great  character  ;  to  be  able  to  give  fit  and  appropriate  ex- 
pression to  great  thoughts.  But  more  than  that.  A  master 
of  music,  a  Mozart  or  a  Beethoven,  is  dead  and  done  with- 
out artists  to  interpret  him  ;  and  so  a  dramatist,  be  he  ever 
so  great,  is  half  dead  and  altogether  done  if  he  cannot  find 
a  master  to  breathe  life  into  the  creations  of  his  brain,  and 
make  them  live  and  walk  across  the  stage,     [Cheers.] 

What  does  the  world  know — I  do  not  speak  of  students 
of  literature,  of  course — but  what  does  the  world  know  of 
most  dramatists  except  Shakespeare,  and  perhaps,  at  a  great 
distance,  Sheridan?  And  yet  Ben  Jonson,  Massinger, 
Webster,  Marlowe,  and  Fletcher  were  all  great  men  [cheers]  : 


248  LORD    COLERIDGE 

but  they  are  almost  unknown  to  the  world  at  large,  be- 
cause their  productions  are  so  seldom  acted.  So,  if  you  will 
reverse  the  picture,  a  great  actor  will  frequently  keep  alive, 
by  a  few  scenes  of  a  play,  or  by  a  single  play  or  two  out  of  a 
great  number,  men  inferior  to  those  I  have  mentioned,  al- 
though, nevertheless,  great  men — such  as  Macklin,  Farquhar, 
Milman,  and  Tennyson. 

But  more  than  that.  A  great  actor  shares  in  the  earthly 
immortality  which  he  so  much  helps  to  create.  I  do  not 
know  that  I  can  accept  as  true  the  marvellous  verse  in  West- 
minster Abbey  in  which  we  are  told  that  Shakespeare  and 
Garrick  : — 

' '  Like  twin  stars  shall  shine, 
And  earth  irradiate  with  beam  divine." 

But  however  absurd  and  extravagant  these  lines  may  be, 
it  is  nevertheless  certainly  true  that  the  names  of  great 
actors  live  almost  as  long  as  those  of  great  dramatists.  The 
name  of  Garrick,  for  example,  will  live  nearly  as  long  prob- 
ably as  the  name  of  Shakespeare.  Roscius  is  certainly 
as  well  known  as  Terence,  and  Racine  is  hardly  better 
known  than  Talma.  But  more  than  that.  The  genius  of  a 
great  actor  elevates  him  into  absolute  equality  with  the  first 
personages  of  his  time.  Pericles  was  the  intimate  friend 
of  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  Roscius  lived  in  the  closest 
intimacy  with  Cicero  and  Caesar,  Garrick  was  the  chosen 
friend  of  Burke  and  Dr.  Johnson,  Kemble  lived  in  intimacy 
with  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  the  King,  Henry  Irving  is  the 
friend  of  this  great  country.  [Loud  cheers.]  To  us  he  is 
the  last,  because  we  are  the  last.  We  shall  have  successors, 
and  so  will  he  ;  but  to  us  he  is  the  last  of  a  great  list  of 
great  names — Quin,  Betterton,  Booth,  Garrick,  Kean,  the 
Kembles,  Young,  IMacready.  [Cheers.]  The  list  is  inex- 
haustible, and  if  it  were  not,  I  have  no  power,  no  knowledge, 
to  exhaust  it. 

And  what  is  true  of  actors  is,  of  course,  true  of  actresses 
too.  [Loud  cheers.]  England  has  a  race  of  great  actresses 
of  which  any  nation  may  be  proud  :  and  if  on  this  occasion 
I  select  from  this  "  dream  of  fair  women  "  one  image,  and 
name  one  name,  and  that  the  name  of  Ellen  Terry  [enthusi- 
astic cheers],  it  is  not  that  I  forget  Mrs.  Siddons,  or  Miss 


HENRY    IRVIXG's   VERSATILITY  249 

O'Neill,  or  Mrs.  Glover,  or  Mrs.  Stirling  [loud  cheers],  or 
many  other  great  women  living  and  passed  away  ;  but  because 
Ellen  Terry  has  been  associated  so  closely  with  many  of 
Mr.  Irving's  successes,  and  because  to  her  genius,  I  am  sure, 
he  would  be  the  first  to  say,  he  owes  not  a  little  of  some  of 
his  brightest  triumphs.     [Loud  cheers.] 

I  wish,  my  lords,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  that  I  had  the 
time  or  the  power  to  detain  you,  with  Charles  Lamb, 
among  some  of  the  old  actors,  but  I  have  not.  I  simply 
refer  you  to  that  inimitable  paper,  so-called — if  you  have 
never  read  it,  don't  go  to  bed  without  reading  it  [laughter] — 
and  if  you  have  read  it,  read  it  again  to-morrow  morning. 
[Renewed  laughter.] 

Passing  from  that,  let  me  ask  what  it  is  that  we  owe  to 
Mr.  Irving.  What  is  it,  stated  shortly  and  simply,  tluit  has 
brought  this  magnificent  gathering  together  to-night?  We 
all  know  that  it  is  the  result  of  the  magnificent  presenta- 
tion of  some  of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare — "  Richard  III," 
"  Macbeth,"  "  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  "  [loud  cheers], 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  [cheers],  "The  Merchant  of  Venice." 
[Cheers.]  I  know  not  whether  I  have  exhausted  the  cata- 
logue [cries  of  "  Hamlet  !  "],  but  those,  at  any  rate,  arc 
some.  [Cheers.]  But  it  is  not  only  in  the  plays  of  Shake- 
speare that  Mr.  Irving  has  exerted  his  genius  and  has  em- 
ployed his  unrivalled  powers  of  presentation  upon  the  stage. 
["Hear!  Hear  !  "]  He  has  done  much  for  us  in  other  mat- 
ters. He  has  done  what  careful  and  accomplished  acting, 
what  beneficent  and  wise  and  intelligent  expense  in  presenting 
a  play  will  do.  [Cheers.]  For  the  plays  of  other  men,  of 
whom  it  is  no  disparagement  to  say  they  are  inferior  to 
those  of  the  greatest  dramatist  that  ever  lived,  Shakespeare 
[cheers],  but  who  themselves  are  considerable  persons — 
"  Charles  I  "  [cheers],  "  The  Bells,"  "  The  Cup,"  "  The  Belle's 
Stratagem,"  "  The  Lyon's  Mail  " — all  these  are  things  that 
we  owe  to  Mr.  Irving.  [Cheers.]  And  for  these,  and  for 
the  manner  in  which  he  has  presented  the  greater  and  the 
lesser  plays  to  us,  as  it  has  been  unexampled  in  our  time,  so 
we  owe  him  a  very  great  debt  of  gratitude,  because,  although 
it  may  be  that  the  effort  of  acting,  and  the  labor  of  presenta- 
tion, have  been  less  in  these  latter  plays,  at  any  rate  the 
success  has  been  absolute  and  complete.     [Cheers.] 


25o  LORD    COLERIDGE 

Moreover,  as  far  as  the  example  and  influence  of  one  man 
can  do  it,  he  has  done  much,  to  use  the  expression  of  the 
Bishop  of  Durham,  "  to  purify  and  exalt  the  dramatic  art." 
[Cheers.]  On  this  point  let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  in  this  particular  matter  Mr. 
Irving  has  stood  alone,  ["Hear!  Hear!"]  It  would  be  un- 
just and  ungenerous  to  say  so.  It  would  be  unfair  praise — 
it  would  be  praise  that  I  am  sure  Mr,  Irving  would  reject, 
and,  if  I  know  anything  of  him,  would  resent.  But,  at  any 
rate,  he  has  followed  the  best  traditions,  he  has  helped,  so 
far  as  he  could,  his  contemporaries,  and  he  has  made  the 
matter  easier  for  those  who  may  come  after  him.  [Cheers.] 
For,  never  let  us  forget  that  the  profession  of  an  actor  is 
surrounded,  as  many  other  professions  are  surrounded,  with 
difificulties,  dangers,  and  temptations  peculiar  to  itself. 
["  Hear!  Hear!"]  It  is  true  that  in  the  case  of  an  actor 
the  difficulties  and  the  temptations  are  more  open  and  more 
obvious  than  in  many  professions,  but  I  do  not  know  that 
they  are  for  that  reason  any  the  more  easy  to  resist  and  to 
overcome,  because  they  are  founded  upon  the  strongest  and 
commonest  passions  of  mankind.  ["Hear!  Hear!"]  I  do 
not  here  speak  of  those  commoner,  coarser,  fouler  forms  of 
vice  which  when  I  was  a  young  man  were  the  disgrace  and  the 
dishonor  of  the  playhouses  of  London,  playhouses  in  which 
the  actors  and  actresses  were  frequently  men  and  women  of 
not  unspotted  character.  Reform  in  that  matter  was  begun 
by  a  man  I  am  proud  to  think  of  as  a  friend — it  was  begun 
by  Mr.  Macready,  [Cheers.]  It  was  carried  on  with  some 
self-sacrifice,  but  with  great  and  successful  results.  Every 
respectable  manager,  I  believe,  since  his  time  has  followed 
the  example  of  Mr.  Macready,  and  of  course  I  need  not  say 
Mr.  Irving  among  them.     [Cheers.] 

But  I  mean  something  more  than  that,  I  mean  that  the 
general  tone  and  atmosphere  of  the  theatre,  wherever  Mr. 
Irving's  influence  is  predominant,  has  been  uniformly  higher 
and  purer.  The  pieces  which  he  has  acted,  and  the  way  he 
has  acted  them,  have  been  always  such  that  no  husband 
need  hesitate  to  take  his  wife,  no  mother  to  take  her  daugh- 
ter, where  Mr,  Irving  is  the  ruling  spirit,  [Cheers.]  He 
has,  I  believe,  recognized  that  in  this  matter  there  lies  upon 
him,  as  upon  every  one  in  his  position,  a  grave  responsibility. 


HENRY    IRVIXG's   VERSATILITY 


251 


He  has  felt,  possibly  unconsciously,  that  the-  heroic  si<;nal 
of  Lord  Nelson  ought  not  to  be  confined  in  its  application 
simply  to  men  of  arms,  but  that  En^dand  expects  every  man 
to  do  his  duty  when  it  lays  upon  him  a  duty  to  do,  and  to 
do  it  nobly.     [Cheers.] 

Moreover,  I  believe  that  what  has  brought  us  together  to- 
night, besides  that  feeling,  is  the  remembrance  of  the  gen- 
erosity and  unselfishness  of  Mr.  Irving's  career.  [Cheer.^.] 
He  has  shown  that  generosity,  not  only  in  the  parts  he  has 
played,  but  in  the  parts  he  has  not  played.  He  has  shown 
that  he  did  not  care  to  be  always  the  central  figure  of  a  sur- 
rounding group  in  which  every  one  was  to  be  subordinated 
to  the  centre,  and  in  which  every  actor  was  to  be  considered 
as  a  foil  to  the  leading  part.  He  has  been  superior  to  the 
selfishness  which  now  and  again  has  interfered  with  the 
course  of  some  of  our  best  actors,  and  he  has  had  his  re- 
ward. He  has  collected  around  him  a  set  of  men  who,  I  be- 
lieve, are  proud  to  act  with  him  [cheers],  men  whose  feeling 
towards  him  has  added  not  a  little  to  the  brilliant  success 
which  his  management  has  achieved  ;  men  who  feel  that 
they  act,  not  merely  under  a  manager,  but  under  a  friend  ; 
men  who  are  proud  to  be  his  companions,  and  many  of 
whom  have  come  here  to-night  to  show  by  their  presence 
that  they  are  so.  [Cheers.]  I  confess  that,  being  a  profes- 
sional man  myself,  I  honor  alike  his  feeling  and  his  wisdom. 
What  to  the  professional  man  can  compensate  for  the  good 
feeling,  the  affection  and  regard  of  those  among  whom  his  life 
is  passed?  [Cheers.]  Surely,  such  feelings  are  worth  more, 
are  worth  far,  far  more,  than  the  little  added  triumph  which 
an  undeviating  and  steady  self-assertion  may  sometimes 
secure.  [Cheers.]  My  lords  and  gentlemen,  I  think  it  is 
because  we  believe  that  those  high  aims  have  been  pursued 
by  Mr.  Irving,  and  because  we  admire  his  character  in  so 
pursuing  them,  that  this  unexampled  gathering  has  come 
together  to-night.  [Loud  cheers.]  It  is  the  desire  to  say 
to  him  in  public,  as  we  have  often  and  often  said  of  him  in 
private,  that  we  admire  his  character,  we  respect  his  course, 
and  we  heartily  wish  him  success  in  all  his  undertakings. 
[Loud  cheers.]  It  is  plain  that  no  man  could  come  to  such 
a  meeting  as  this,  and  could  bring  together  such  an  associa- 
tion of  men  as  I  see  before  me,  unless  he  had  great  and  re- 


^'D-' 


LORD    COLERIDGE 


markable  qualities  as  an  artist.  [Cheers.]  These  alone 
would  not  be  sufficient,  because  there  has  been  many  a 
great  artist  who  has  never  had  such  a  recognition  as  this. 
But  it  is  undoubtedly  true,  it  is  in  vain  to  dispute  it,  that  no 
one  could  have  produced  so  great  an  effect  upon  the  culti- 
vated mind  of  England,  who  was  not  himself  an  accom- 
plished, a  cultivated,  and  a  thorough  artist.      [Cheers.] 

It  does  not  become  me — indeed,  I  have  not  the  skill  or  power 
— to  analyze  critically  Mr.  Irving's  genius,  to  weigh  it  in  the 
balance  of  results,  and  to  say  that  in  this  it  exceeds  or  in 
that  it  is  deficient.  To  me  it  is  sufficient  to  be  certain  that  he 
has  an  exceptional  and  unusual  power  of  distinctly  realizing 
to  himself  an  intellectual  conception  of  the  part  which  he 
acts.  [Cheers.]  He  has  the  power  of  expressing  to  me  and 
to  others,  and  of  making  us  comprehend  what  his  own  distinct 
intellectual  conviction  is,  and  that  to  me  is  most  profoundly 
interesting.  It  does  not  become  me,  where  some  is  good 
and  so  much  is  more  than  good — is  excellent — as  an  occa- 
sional playgoer,  to  pick  out  and  praise  this  or  that  partic- 
ular thing;  but  if  I  may  be  permitted*  to  say  in  what,  in  mj'- 
judgment,  the  genius  of  Mr.  Irving  has  culminated,  I  should, 
merely  as  a  matter  of  personal  opinion,  pick  out  the  play 
scene  in  "  Hamlet,"  and  the  intense  malignity  of  the  felon 
in  "  The  Lyons  Mail."  [Cheers.]  But  I  do  not  pretend  to 
be  a  critic.  AH  I  can  say  is,  that  I  have  found  great  delight  in 
Mr.  Irving,  and  that  I  have  found  great  cause  for  w^onderand 
admiration  in  the  versatility  of  his  powers.  In  this  he  appears 
to  me  to  be  a  thorough  artist.  He  not  only  plays  good 
tragedy  but  he  plays  good  comedy  and  he  plays  good  farce. 
[Cheers.]  It  has  been  said — I  know  not  with  how  much  truth 
— of  Garrick,  that  he  played  in  one  and  the  same  night 
"  King  Lear"  and  "Abel  Drugger."  I  do  not  know  whether 
Mr.  Irving  ever  played  in  one  night  "  Hamlet  "  and  "  Alfred 
Jingle,"  but  I  know  that  he  has  played  both  and  played 
them  well.  I  am  content  simply  to  admire,  and  I  say  that 
in  these  things  Mr.  Irving  has  shown  himself  a  thorough  and 
accomplished  artist.       [Cheers.] 

In  conclusion  let  me  say  that  as  America  sent  Booth  to  us, 
so  we  send  Irving  to  America,  and  as  Irving  and  England  re- 
ceived Booth  with  open  arms,so  I  am  convinced  that  that  great 
and  generous  country  will  receive  our  first-rate  and  admirable 


IN    GOLDEN    CHAINS  253 

actor.  [Cheers.]  At  all  events,  we  tell  America  that  \vc 
send  her  one  of  our  best  [cheers],  on  this  her  birthday  as  a 
birthday  present  [cheers]  ;  and  that  \\e  send  her  a  man  to 
whom  I  may  fitly  and  properly  adapt  the  words  of  the  threat 
Roman  orator  spoken  of  his  predecessor — I  mean  Mr,  Irvine's 
predecessor — "  Summiis  artifcx  cf,  nichcrcule,  semper  artiuvi 
in  repnblica  tanqnauiin  sccna  optiinaruin,"  which  I  may  ven- 
ture to  translate  roughly,  for  the  benefit  of  the  one  or  two 
people  here  who  do  not  understand  Latin  [  laughter],  that 
he  is  a  consummate  artist;  and,  by  Jove!  capable  of  the 
best  arts  both  on  the  .stage  and  off  it.  [Loud  and  pro- 
longed cheers.] 


IN  GOLDEN  CHAINS 

[Speech  of  Lord  Coleridge  at  a  banquet  given  by  the  City  of  Boston, 
at  the  Parker  House,  September  8,  1883,  to  "visiting  representatives  to 
the  Foreign  and  Domestic  Exhibition  "  then  in  progress.  Lord  Coleridge 
was  heartily  welcomed  by  the  large  company  present,  and  his  remarks, 
with  his  clever  references  to  American  authors  and  American  affairs, 
were  received  with  cheers.] 

Mr.  Mayor,  your  Excellency  and  Gentlemen  :— I 
assure  you  that  I  rise  to  return  thanks  on  this  occasion  with 
feelings  of  the  most  unfeigned  gratitude — gratitude  to  you, 
sir,  for  the  gracious  manner  in  which  you  have  been  pleased 
to  propose  this  toast ;  to  you,  gentlemen,  for  the  cordial 
manner  in  which  you  have  been  pleased  to  accept  it.  It  is 
true  that  on  more  than  one  occasion  during  my  very  short 
sojourn  in  America  I  have  been  compelled  to  inflict  a  speech 
upon  long-suffering  American  audiences.  [Laughter.]  In 
the  stately  City  of  Albany ;  in  the  cheerful,  picturesque, 
homely,  delightful  City  of  Portland,  the  charms  of  whose 
men  and  whose  women  I  shall  never  forget,  and  once  more, 
to-day,  in  this  city.  And  yet  I  can  truly  say  that  never  in 
my  life  till  now,  or  not  more  than  now,  rising  to  return 
thanks  to  this  toast  in  this  splendid  and  magnificent  city, 
have  I  so  earnestly  and  unfeignedly  desired  that  some  more 
adequate  example  of  my  dear  old  country  was  before  you  ; 
that  there  was  some  more  competent  and  adequate  exponent 


254  LORD    COLERIDGE 

of  the  learning  and  eloquence  and  the  refinement  of  English- 
men than  an  old  and  weary  lawyer,  who,  although  by  some 
accident  he  chances  to  have  attained  and  to  hold  all  but  the 
very  highest  and  proudest  station  in  the  great  profession  to 
which  it  is  his  pride  and  privilege  to  belong,  has  never  ceased 
to  wonder  how  he  came  to  hold  it.  [Laughter  and  applause.] 
Nevertheless,  the  kindness  and  cordiality  of  this  greeting 
will  be  remembered.  Dmn  nicmorissc  met,  dum  spiritus  kos 
regit  artus.     [Applause.] 

I  am  quite  conscious  that  such  a  greeting  as  you  have 
been  pleased  to  extend  to-night  is  made  to  my  country,  and 
not  to  me  ;  or,  if  made  to  me,  because  I  am  an  Englishman, 
and  because  1  represent  to  you  in  some  faint  measure  the 
great  country  from  which  I  come.  [Applause.]  I  knew 
enough,  from  newspapers  and  other  authentic  modes  of  in- 
formation [laughter],  of  the  kindly  and  cordial  feeling  en- 
tertained in  American  cities  toward  my  beloved  sovereign, 
not  to  be  surprised  when  I  heard  "  God  Save  the  Queen." 
But  I  will  confess  to  you,  gentlemen,  in  spite  of  all  I  have 
heard  of  American  cordiality  and  American  hospitality,  I 
was  for  a  moment  surprised  to  hear  "  Rule  Britannia  "  played 
on  these  shores  of  the  Atlantic.  Upon  that  great  ocean,  here- 
tofore, the  two  great  nations  have  contended,  with  equal 
courage,  I  hope  I  may  say,  but  not  always  (in  the  nature  of 
things  it  could  not  be)  with  equal  success.  If  we  could  point 
to  the  battle  of  the  "  Chesapeake"  and  the  "  Shannon,"  you 
can  point  to  the  battle  of  the  "Java"  and  the"  Constitution," 
and  your  victory  in  that  combat  is,  through  the  medium  of 
mezzotint  engravings,  one  of  the  earliest  recollections  of  my 
childhood,  because,  although  it  was  long  before  I  was  born, 
yet  a  near  relative  of  my  own  was  an  of^cer  in  the  "  Java  " 
and  for  some  time  a  prisoner  in  America,  and  I  can  testify 
that  he  never  forgot  to  his  dying  day  either  the  gallantry 
of  American  seamen  or  the  kindness  of  American  people. 
[Applause.] 

Gentlemen,  the  welcome  that  has  been  extended  to  me 
since  I  landed  at  New  York  has  followed  me  here.  I  am 
here  as  the  guest  of  this  ancient  and  famous  Commonwealth 
— ancient,  I  say,  as  far  as  things  in  America  can  be  ancient 
— as  I  have  said,  the  guest  of  this  Commonwealth,  at  the 
hands  of  your  Excellency,  the  Governor  of  this  State.  [Ap- 


IN    GOLDEN    CHAINS  255 

plause.]  And  I  must  say  that  his  Excellency  has  spared  no 
pains,  no  trouble,  no  thoughtful  care,  to  make  my  stay  in 
this  place  happy  and  cheerful,  and,  to  use  an  English  wonl, 
thoroughly  comfortable.  I  thank  you  and  I  thank  him  most 
cordially  and  warmly  for  this  welcome.  I  thank  him  for 
another  thing.  He  has  changed  sticks  with  me,  gentlemen 
[laughter],  and  he  has  given  me  in  return  for  one  of  no 
intrinsic  value  a  very  valuable  and  excellent  stick.  In  the 
"Iliad,"  when  Glaucus  exchanged  his  golden  armor  for  the 
mail  of  Diomedc,  ill-natured  people  said  he  was  afraid.  I 
think  no  man,  ill-natured  or  good-natured,  will  say  your 
Governor  is  afraid  of  me.  But,  as  I  have  told  him  in  private, 
so  I  say  in  public,  he  sends  me  back  to  Europe  with  this 
proud  and  consolatory  feeling  that  I  am  the  only  man  in 
the  world  who  ever  got  the  better  of  General  Butler.  [Loud 
laughter  and  applause.] 

Gentlemen,  passing  away  from  the  kindness  and  cordiality 
and  generosity  of  General  Butler,  how  am  I  to  rise  to  the 
heights  which  the  recollections  of  Massachusetts  and  of 
Boston  would  fain  invite  me  to  aspire  to?  I  speak  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Bunker  Hill,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
"T  wharf,"  which,  a  friend  of  mine  has  told  me  since  I  came 
into  this  room,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Boston  tea-fight. 
I  scorn  such  strictly  historic  accuracy.  I  believe  faithfully 
that  that  admirable  beverage,  which  you  have  brewed  ever 
since,  has  been  improved  since  the  fight  at  "  T  wharf."  I  have 
seen  your  old  State  House,  with  the  lion  and  unicorn  upon 
it.  I  have  seen  your  noble  building  in  which  your  two 
houses  assemble,  with  General  Burgoyne's  cannon  in  the 
ante-chamber.  I  have  seen  Faneuil  Hall,  a  plain  but  most 
magnificent  building.  I  have  seen  that  most  magnificent 
building  within  a  few  miles  of  this  place — the  Memorial  Hall 
of  Harvard  University.  Gentlemen,  these  things  are  full  of 
interest  and  history ;  and  I  don't  believe  men  who  tell  me 
you  have  no  history.  It  may  be  that  you  have  a  short  his- 
tory, because  you  cannot  help  it  ;  but  you  have  a  great 
history.  You  have  a  history  of  which  any  commonwealth 
may  justly  and  rightly  be  proud.     [Applause.] 

You  know — forgive  my  vanity  if  I  say  I  know,  too — that 
you  bred  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  Daniel  Webster,  and 
Joseph  Story,  and  Theodore  Parker:  Daniel  Webster,  whose 


256  LORD    COLERIDGE 

hand  I  was  privileged  as  a  boy  at  Eton  to  press,  when  he 
was  in  England  as  your  representative,  and  whose  eloquence 
I  have  humbly  studied  ever  since;  Story,  a  household  word 
with  every  English  lawyer  ;  Parker,  perhaps  one  of  your 
highest  and  greatest  souls.  [Applause.]  Hawthorne,  if 
you  will  forgive  me  the  expression  of  a  foreigner,  is,  perhaps, 
taken  altogether,  almost  your  foremost  man  of  letters 
[applause]  ;  Longfellow,  the  delight  and  darling  of  two 
hemispheres ;  Holmes,  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table 
[applause]  ;  the  autocrat,  if  he  chose,  of  every  dinner  table, 
too — but  there  I  am  told  he  is  content  to  play  the  part  of  a 
constitutional  sovereign.  Emerson,  as  broad  and  as  strong 
as  one  of  your  long  rivers,  and  as  pure ;  Lowell,  I  am  proud 
to  say,  my  own  honest  friend  [applause],  your  representa- 
tive at  this  moment  in  my  own  country.  Like  Garrick  in 
Joshua  Reynolds's  picture,  he  excels  in  either  tragedy  or 
comedy,  and  is  delightful  whether  as  Hosea  Biglow  or  as 
James  Russell  Lowell,  skilled  with  equal  genius  to  move 
the  hearts  of  his  readers  whether  to  smiles  or  tears.  And 
Howells,  the  last  of  your  American  invaders  who  have  taken 
England  by  storm.  [Applause.]  These  are  your  glories, 
these  are  the  men  who  make  your  history.  These  are  the 
men,  forgive  me  for  saying,  of  whom  you  ought  to  be  proud, 
if  you  are  not  heartily  proud.     [Applause.] 

Gentlemen,  in  the  person  of  a  very  humble  Englishman 
on  the  one  side,  and  of  this  great  company  on  the  other,  let 
me  think  that  England  and  America  have  met  together 
to-night,  that  they  have  come  together  and  may  ever  stay 
together.  [Applause.]  Gentlemen,  we  are  one,  as  Wash- 
ington Allston  said,  and  most  truly  said, — the  great  painter 
and  the  poet  who  worked  in  this  city,  and  who  lies  not  far 
off  in  the  Cambridge  churchyard, — we  are  one  in  blood,  we 
are  one  in  language,  we  are  one  in  law,  we  are  one  in  hatred 
of  oppression  and  love  of  liberty.  [Cries  of  "  Good,"  and 
loud  applause.]  We  are  bound  together,  if  I  may  rever- 
ently say  so,  by  God  Himself  in  golden  chains  of  mutual 
affection  and  mutual  respect,  and  two  nations  so  joined  to- 
gether, I  am  firmly  convinced,  man  will  never  put  asunder. 
[Loud  and  prolonged  applause  and  cheers.] 


PATRICK   A.    COLLINS 


IRELAND'S  DREAM  OF  NATIONALITY 

[vSpeech  of  Tatrick  A.  Collins  at  the  banquet  of  the  Charitable  Irish 
Society  of  the  City  of  Boston.  The  banquet  took  place  in  Boston,  March 
J  7,  1899.  Mr.  Collins  had  lately  returned  from  his  service  abroad  as 
United  States  Consul-General  at  London.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — I  have  been  .so  long 
a  truant  to  these  gatherings  that  I  appreciate  all  the  more 
your  kindness  in  assigning  me  to  respond  to  this  time- 
honored  sentiment — "  The  day  we  celebrate."  For  more 
than  160  years  some  one  has  stood  in  this  place  to  say  what 
the  day  means  to  this  society,  what  it  means  to  us  and  ours, 
and  all  the  men  and  women  of  our  race  in  every  land,  as  well 
as  Ireland.  For  everywhere  on  the  earth  our  kindred  are 
scattered,  and  on  all  the  seas,  speaking  the  speech  of  all  men, 
and  found  in  all  their  activities  ;  and  wherever  they  are, 
they  group  and  gather  to-day  to  honor  saint  and  mother- 
land. 

The  festival  is  religious,  national,  Irish.  Fourteen 
hundred  years  ago  a  simple,  sublime  young  man,  with  the 
atmosphere  of  heaven  about  him,  walked  through  Ireland, 
preaching  and  baptizing,  and  when  his  footsteps  had  ended, 
the  pagan  land  he  saw  at  first  had  become  Christian  for- 
ever; and  not  only  Christian  itself,  but  destined  for  ages  to 
give  letters  and  light  to  Pict  and  Briton  and  Frank,  and  to 
send  St.  Gall  to  set  the  cross  high  on  the  Alps  in  the  canton 
that  still  bears  his  name. 

Christian  and  reverent  Ireland  became  in  that  far-avvay 
time,  and  Christian  and  reverent  it  has  remained,  through 
all  the  troubled  centuries,  down  to  this  hour.  So,  rever- 
ently, we  honor  the  memory  of  the  saintly  Pict  or  Frank, 

257 


258  PATRICK   A.    COLLINS 

wiio  brought  the  light  to  Ireland,  the  light  that  shall  last 
there  till  all  the  lights  of  the  world  go  out ;  and  so  our 
kindred  celebrate  the  day,  and  will  throughout  the  ages. 

Seven  hundred  years  after  St.  Patrick  went  into  Ireland 
to  do  God's  enduring  work,  an  English  King  sent  mission- 
aries there  to  do  another  kind  of  work — and  that  work  is 
not  yet  done.  It  never  will  be  done  ;  it  simply  never  can 
be  done  while  England  is  England  and  Ireland  stands. 

I'or  these  last  700  years  the  ghastly  story  runs  of  Eng- 
land's attempt  to  force  her  rule,  and  for  more  than  two  cen- 
turies to  force  her  newly-acquired  creed,  upon  a  people  who 
loved  their  religion  with  all  the  fervor  taught  by  their  own 
apostle,  and  wdio  loved  liberty  with  a  passion  never  yet 
comprehended  by  a  tyrant.  The  eye  sweeps  the  island  in 
those  dreadful  times,  and  sees  nothing  but  flame  and  blood, 
desolation,  ruin  and  misery.  It  rests  upon  the  statute  book, 
and  reads  nothing  but  infamy. 

The  coldest-blooded  English  historian  admits  that  after 
four  centuries  of  wasteful  wars,  the  policy  of  his  country 
changed  from  conquest  to  extermination.  But  as  the  people 
declined  to  submit,  they  also  declined  to  die.  A  trium- 
phant chapter  in  Kingsley's  "  Westward  Ho  "  describes  the 
murder  by  an  English  army  of  a  host  of  unarmed  Irish  men, 
women  and  children,  not  far  from  my  early  home,  so  that 
the  story  should  be  spread  and  terror  seize  the  province. 
Elizabeth's  lieutenant,  when  he  thought  his  work  was  done, 
wrote  to  his  mistress  that  "  now  all  that  is  left  of  the 
ancient  Irish  is  carcasses  and  ashes."  But  the  prolific,  un- 
conquered  race  rose  from  its  carcasses  and  ashes,  survived 
the  butcheries  of  Elizabeth  and  Cromwell,  the  perfidy  of 
William,  the  banishment  or  murder  of  their  leaders,  the 
awful  agony  of  penal  terms,  the  ruin  or  plunder  of  their  last 
chapel,  and  the  loss  of  their  last  acre  of  land,  ever  resisting 
as  best  they  could,  till  they  lived  at  last  to  see  the  victor  of 
Waterloo  surrender  to  O'Connell. 

In  our  own  days,  a  pale  young  man  from  Ireland  rose  in 
the  alien  Parliament  and  declared  that  no  more  business  for 
the  empire  should  be  done  till  the  case  of  his  country  was 
heard.  And  no  more  business  was  done  until  modern  Irish 
reform  began  and  the  awful  burden  of  the  poorest  people 
in  Europe  began  to  be  lifted. 


Ireland's  dkeam  of  xatkjxality         259 

The  poorest  people  they  yet  remain,  crushed  by  a  wci^jlit 
that  only  long  companionship  with  miser}'  can  bear;  but 
the  burden  lightens  year  by  }car,  and  we  may  hoi)c  to  sec 
in  the  next  generation  better  material  conditions  than  Ireland 
has  known  since  her  land  was  stolen  and  her  industries  sup- 
pressed. More  than  that,  another  generation  will  see  the 
land  of  Ireland  practically  owned  by  those  who  till  it,  or 
held  on  terms  that  allow  them  to  live.  Of  course,  there 
is  no  restitution,  no  return  of  the  stolen  land,  any  more 
than  there  is  of  stolen  churches.  St.  Patrick  could  not  say 
mass  in  the  cathedral  that  bears  his  name,  and  that  his  fol- 
lowers built.  But  the  people  who  occupy  the  land  stolen 
from  their  ancestors  are  at  kist  permitted  to  buy  it  from  the 
descendants  of  those  who  stole  it,  and  to  pay  for  it  by  fifty 
years  or  more  of  painful  toil  and  nameless  privation  ;  but  at 
last  the  land  will  be  theirs  and  forever,  after  ages  of  struggle 
and  woe  and  misery,  such  as  no  other  people  ever  endured. 
So  ends  the  fight  over  Irish  land. 

And  as  in  the  meantime  the  Irish  will  till  their  own  lands, 
so  will  they  some  time  make  their  own  laws  and  fly  their 
own  flag.  For  the  Irish  question,  like  the  Irish  man,  has  a 
soul  as  well  as  a  body,  and  the  soul  of  the  Irish  question  is 
not  land,  but  liberty.  "  Three  acres  and  a  cow  "  and  fellow- 
ship with  the  earth  may  satisfy  all  the  longings  of  swinish 
men,  but  the  Irish  Celt,  next  to  God,  loves  liberty — for 
himself  and  for  all  men — and  next  to  God  he  loves  his 
country.  For  liberty  and  for  country  he  has  struggled 
through  these  dreary  centuries,  suffered  and  endured  all 
hate  and  wrong,  died  on  tlie  field  and  swung  from  the  gib- 
bet, and  he  and  his  people  are  as  Irish  to-day  as  when 
Henry's  horde  came  in  to  conquer — and  to  fail. 

Do  you  think  that  this  people,  with  a  history  so  full  of 
passionate  aspiration  and  heroic  fortitude,  so  full  of  courage, 
of  sacrifice  and  glory,  will  surrender  or  fail  at  last?  Not  so, 
while  they  dream  the  dream  of  nationality,  and  still  believe 
in  a  God  that  made  them  Celts,  not  Saxons,  and  has  ever 
watched  over  them.  Whether  that  dream  shall  become  a 
reality  in  our  day  or  in  a  later  one,  it  will  come  true,  by 
some  fair  chance  to  fight  for  it  in  the  coming  clash  and 
smash  of  nations,  or  if  England  can  get  eyes  to  see  that 
her  Irish  experiment  has  been  and  ever  will  be  a  failure,  and 


26o  PATRICK   A.    COLLINS 

conclude  a  lasting  peace  with  her  neighbor — come  soon  or 
late,  in  one  form  or  in  another — the  Irish  question  will  be 
settled  at  last,  and  settled  upon  Irish  lines.  Till  then  many- 
things  for  England,  great  and  powerful  as  she  is,  remain  un- 
settled ;  when  that  question  is  settled  many  things  that  ap- 
pear dark  will  be  made  plain,  many  things  that  vex  Eng- 
land's councils  and  her  politicians  will  pass  away. 

But  in  any  case,  time  and  the  age  and  the  progress  of 
mankind  fight  for  Ireland.  What  she  has  suffered  she  will 
endure  no  more.  All  her  gains  are  permanent.  Every  step 
is  forward.  Every  throb  of  her  great  heart  makes  more  life 
and  blood  and  energy.  God  watch  and  ward  the  old  land 
and  keep  the  hearts  of  its  mothers  as  pure  and  sweet  as  they 
are  to-day,  and  the  arms  of  her  sons  as  strong,  till  the  faith 
that  never  faltered  is  justified,  till  the  passionate  longing  is 
satisfied  at  last.     [Applause.] 


WILKIE   COLLINS 


AMERICAN  HOSPITALITY 

[Speech  of  Wilkie  Collins  at  a  reception  given  by  the  Lotos  Club,  in 
his  honor,  New  York  City,  September  27,  1873.  Whitelaw  Raid,  in  intro- 
ducing Mr.  Collins,  said  :  "  We  have  met  to-night  to  greet  a  visitor  from 
the  other  side,  of  whom  nothing  is  unknown  to  us  but  his  face.  Mav  he 
give  us  long  and  frequent  opportunity  for  better  acquaintance  with  that. 
Thackeray  once  closed  a  charming  paper  on  an  American  author  with 
words  which  we  may  fitly  take  up  and  apply  in  turn  to  our  English 
guest  :  '  It  has  been  his  fortunate  lot  to  give  great  happiness  and  dcHght 
to  the  world,  which  thanks  him  in  return  with  an  immense  kindhne.ss, 
respect,  affection.'  [Applau.se.]  And  as  Thackeray's  great  companion 
in  work  and  fame,  our  guest's  name  is  a  familiar  association  with  his,  in 
America,  for  we  had  come  to  prize  him  as  the  friend  and  literary  asso- 
ciate of  Charles  Dickens,  even  before  we  had  learned  to  honor  him  yet 
more  for  his  own  sake."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — Many  years  aero, 
more  years  than  I  now  quite  like  to  reckon — I  was  visiting 
Sorrento,  in  the  Bay  of  Naples,  with  my  father,  mother  and 
brothers,  as  a  boy  of  thirteen.  At  that  time  of  my  life,  as 
at  this  time  of  my  life,  I  was  an  insatiable  reader  of  that 
order  of  books  for  which  heavy  people  have  invented  the 
name  of  "  light  literature."  [Laughter.]  Indue  course  of 
time  I  exhausted  the  modest  resources  of  the  library  which 
we  had  brought  to  Naples,  and  found  myself  faced  with  the 
necessity  of  borrowing  from  the  resources  of  our  fellow- 
travellers,  summer  residents  of  Sorrento  like  ourselves. 

Among  them  was  a  certain  countryman  of  yours,  very 
tall,  very  lean,  very  silent,  and  very  melancholy.  Under 
what  circumstances  the  melancholy  of  this  gentleman  took 
its  rise,  I  am  not  able  to  tell  you.  The  ladies  thought  it 
was  a  disappointment  in  love  ;  the  men  attributed  it  to  a 
cause  infinitely  more  serious  than  that — I  mean  indigestion. 

261 


262  WILKIE    COLLINS 

Whether  he  suffered  in  heart  or  whether  he  suffered  in 
stomach,  I  took,  I  remember,  a  boy's  unreasonable  fancy  to 
him,  passing  over  dozens  of  other  people,  apparently  far 
more  acceptable  than  he  was.  I  ventured  to  look  up  to  the 
tall  American — it  was  a  long  way  to  look  up — and  said  in  a 
trembling  voice  :  "  Can  you  lend  me  a  book  to  read  ?  " 
He  looked  down  to  me — it  was  a  long  way  to  look  down — 
and  said  :  "  I  have  got  but  two  amusing  books  ;  one  of 
them  is  '  The  Sorrows  of  Werther,'  and  the  other  is  *  The 
Sentimental  Journey.'  [Laughter.]  You  are  heartily  wel- 
come to  both  these  books.  Take  them  home  and  when  you 
have  read  them,  bring  them  back  and  dine  with  me,  and  tell 
me  what  you  think  of  them." 

I  took  them  home  and  read  them,  and  told  him  what  I 
thought  of  them,  much  more  freely  than  I  would  now,  and 
last,  not  least,  I  had  an  excellent  dinner  crowned  with  a 
cake,  which  was  an  epoch  in  my  youthful  existence,  and 
which,  I  may  say,  lives  gratefully  and  greasily  in  my  mem- 
ory to  the  present  day.     [Applause.] 

Now,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  I  venture  to  tell  you 
this  for  one  reason.  It  marks  my  first  experience  with 
American  kindness  and  American  hospitality.  In  many 
different  ways  this  early  expression  of  your  kindness  and 
hospitality  has  mingled  in  my  after-life,  now  in  England, 
now  on  the  Continent,  until  it  has  culminated  in  this  magni- 
ficent reception  from  the  Lotos  Club.  I  am  not  only  grati- 
fied but  touched  by  the  manner  in  which  you  have  greeted 
me,  and  the  cordiality  with  which  the  remarks  of  your  Presi- 
dent have  been  received.  I  venture  to  say  that  I  see  in 
this  reception  something  more  than  a  recognition  of  my 
humble  labors  only.  I  think  I  see  a  recognition  of  English 
literature,  liberal,  spontaneous  and  sincere,  which  I  think  is 
an  honor  to  you  as  well  as  an  honor  to  me.  In  the  name  of 
English  literature,  I  beg  gratefully  to  thank  you.  On  my 
own  behalf,  I  beg  to  assure  you  that  I  shall  not  soon  forget . 
the  encouragement  you  have  offered  to  me,  at  the  outset  of  ^ 
my  career  in  America.  Permit  mc  to  remind  you  that  I 
am  now  speaking  the  language  of  sincere  gratitude,  and 
that  is  essentially  a  language  of  very  few  words.  [Ap- 
plause.] 


ROBERT  COLLYER 


SAXON  GRIT 


[Speech  of  Rev.  Dr.  Robert  Collycr  at  the  seventy-fourth  anniversary 
banquet  of  the  New  England  vSociety  in  the  City  of  New  York,  Decem- 
ber 22,  1879.  The  President  of  the  Society,  Daniel  F.  Appleton,  was  in 
the  chair,  and  called  upon  Dr.  Coll3'er  to  respond  to  the  followiufj 
toast  :  "  The  Saxon  Grit — which  in  New  England  as  in  Old  England 
has  made  a  race  of  men  to  be  honored,  feared  and  respected."] 

Gentlemen: — When  your  President  sent  nic  word  about 
the  sentiment  to  which  he  wanted  me  to  respond — Saxon 
Grit — and  I  began  to  think  the  ground  over,  and  to  see 
what  Saxon  grit  meant,  it  seemed  so  great  a  thing  to  talk 
about,  so  wide  in  its  sweep,  and  so  noble  in  its  ingathering, 
that  knowing  just  the  sort  of  men  I  was  to  meet,  and  how 
scant  the  time  must  be,  I  came  near  illustrating  the  fact 
that  I  had  no  Saxon  grit  in  me  by  running  aAvay.  [Laugh- 
ter.] It  is  a  grand  subject,  and  demands  a  grand  handling, 
and  to  do  it  any  justice  I  should  need  to  take  some  such 
time  as  a  minister  once  took  who  came  to  preach  for  my 
people,  on  an  exchange.  I  said  to  one  of  the  deacons,  on 
Monday,  "  How  did  you  like  the  sermon?"  "Well,"  he 
said,  "  the  first  three  hours  and  a  half  I  liked  pretty  well, 
but  after  that  I  began  to  get  discouraged."  [Laughter.] 
For  you  see  Saxon  grit  is  the  story  of  a  thousand  years.  It 
is  the  story  of  the  struggle  of  millions  of  men,  on  battle- 
fields in  two  worlds.  It  is  the  story  of  men  like  Alfred,  and 
Cromwell,  and  Washington,  and  Lincoln,  and  Grant  [ap- 
plause], and  of  others  who  were  just  as  brave  and  true,  and 
"  as  positive  as  the  earth  is  firm,"  but  who  had  to  be  content 
with  the  feeling  that  they  had  done  their  duty,  and  take 
that  for  their  reward.  [Applause.]  It  takes  in  the  mighty 
conquests  of  peace  as  well  as  war,  the  stand   made   for  the 

263 


264  ROBERT   COLLYER 

great  Charter,  the  open  Bible  and  a  free  mind  to  read  it,  the 
fi"ht  over  ship  money,  the  "  tempest  in  a  tea-pot  "  in  Bos- 
ton Harbor  which  could  only  be  content  with  a  reach  of  the 
Atlantic  for  the  brewing  ;  and  it  includes  the  honest  dollar. 
[Applause.] 

These  are  the  lines  a  man  must  follow  who  would  speak 
of  the  Saxon  grit  ;  and  to  trespass  so  upon  your  time  would 
be  a  gross  intrusion  that  I  could  not  expect  you  to  pardon 
and  again  tender  me  an  invitation  to  a  New  England  dinner. 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  I  like  a  good  dinner  and  good 
company  too  well  to  run  that  risk.  And  so  I  thought  I 
would  try  and  compress  what  I  had  to  say  into  a  very  small 
compass,  and  as  I  found  my  thought  going  off  in  a  sort  of 
swing  and  taking  the  shape  of  an  old  ballad,  I  concluded  to 
"  drop  into  poetry,"  which,  Mr.  Wegg  says,  "  comes  more 
expensive  "  than  prose  ;  and  so  for  this  reason,  for  want  of 
a  better,  you  will  have  to  put  up  with  all  the  less  of  it. 
[Cheers.] 


Worn  with  the  battle  by  Stamford  town, 

Fighting  the  Norman  by  Hastings  Bay, 
Harold  the  Saxon's  sun  went  dov/n 

While  the  acorns  were  falling,  one  autumn  day. 
Then  the  Norman  said,  "  I  am  lord  of  the  land  ; 

By  tenor  of  conquest  here  I  sit  ; 
I  will  rule  you  now  with  the  iron  hand  " — 

But  he  had  not  thought  of  the  Saxon  grit. 

He  took  the  land,  and  he  took  the  men, 

And  burnt  the  homesteads  from  Trent  to  Tyne, 
Made  the  freemen  serfs  by  a  stroke  of  the  pen, 

Eat  up  the  corn,  and  drank  the  wine, 
And  said  to  the  maiden  pure  and  fair, 

"  You  shall  be  my  leman,  as  is  most  fit, 
Your  Saxon  churl  may  rot  in  his  lair  " —      , 

But  he  had  not  measured  the  Saxon  grit. 

To  the  merrj'  green  wood  went  bold  Robin  Hood, 

With  his  strong-hearted  yeomanry  ripe  for  the  fray. 
Driving  the  arrow  into  the  marrow 

Of  all  the  proud  Normans  who  came  in  his  way  ; 
Scorning  the  fetter,  fearless  and  free, 

Winning  by  valor  or  foiling  by  wit, 
Dear  to  our  Saxon  folk  ever  is  he. 

This  merry  old  rogue  with  the  Saxon  grit. 


S\XON    GKIT  265 

And  Kelt  the  tanner  wliipt  out  hi.-,  knife, 

And  Watt  tlie  smith  his  lianimcr  hr<)uj,dit  down 
For  rnth  of  the  maid  he  loved  Letter  lliaii  Hfe, 

And  by  breakinj,'  a  licad  made  a  hole  in  the'  Crown. 
From  the  vSaxon  heart  rose  a  mi^'hty  roar, 

"  Our  life  shall  not  be  by  the  Kins^r's  permit  ; 
We  will  fight  for  the  risht,  we  want  no  more  "'— 

Then  the  Norman  found  out  the  Saxon  "rit. 

For  slow  and  sure  as  the  oaks  had  j^rown 

From  the  acorns  falling  that  autumn  day, 
So  the  vSaxon  manhood  in  thorpe  and  town 

To  a  nobler  stature  grew  alway, 
Winning  by  inches,  holding  by  clinches, 

Sanding  by  law  and  the  human  right, 
Many  times  failing,  never  once  quailing, 

So  the  new  day  came  out  of  the  night. 

Then  rising  afar  in  the  Western  sea, 

A  new  world  stood  in  the  morn  of  the  day, 
Ready  to  welcome  the  brave  and  free 

Who  could  wrench  out  the  heart  and  march  away 
From  the  narrow,  contracted,  dear  old  land, 

Where  the  poor  are  held  by  a  cruel  bit, 
To  ampler  spaces  for  heart  and  hand — 

And  here  was  a  chance  for  the  Saxon  grit. 

Steadily  steering,  eagerly  peering, 

Trusting  in  God,  your  fathers  came, 
Pilgrims  and  strangers,  fronting  all  dangers, 

Cool-headed  Saxons  with  hearts  aflame. 
Bound  by  the  letter,  but  free  from  the  fetter, 

And  hiding  their  freedom  in  Holy  Writ, 
They  gave  Deuteronomy  hints  in  economy, 

And  made  a  new  Moses  of  Saxou  grit. 

They  whittled  and  waded  through  forest  and  fen, 

Fearless  as  ever  of  what  might  befall  ; 
Pouring  out  life  for  the  nurture  of  men  ; 

In  faith  that  by  manhood  the  world  wins  all. 
Inventing  baked  beans,  and  no  end  of  machines  ; 

Great  with  the  rifle  and  great  with  the  axe — 
Sending  their  notions  over  the  oceans. 

To  fill  empty  stomachs  and  straighten  bent  backs. 

Swift  to  take  chances  that  end  in  the  dollar. 

Yet  open  of  hand  when  the  dollar  is  made. 
Maintaining  the  meet'n,  exalting  the  scholar, 

But  a  little  too  anxious  about  a  good  trade  ; 


266  RODERT    COLLYER 

This  is  3-oung  Jonathan,  son  of  old  John, 
Positive,  peaceable,  firm  in  the  right  ; 

Saxon  men  all  of  us,  may  we  be  one, 
Steady  for  freedom,  and  strong  in  her  might. 

Then,  slow  and  sure,  as  the  oaks  have  grown 

From  the  acorns  that  fell  on  that  old  dim  day, 
So  this  new  manhood,  in  city  and  town. 

To  a  nobler  stature  will  grow  alvvay  ; 
Winning  by  inches,  holding  by  clinches. 

Slow  to  contention,  and  slower  to  quit. 
Now  and  then  failing,  but  never  once  quailing, 

Let  us  thank  God  for  the  Saxon  grit. 
[Prolonged  applause] 


TRIBUTE  TO  EDWIN  BOOTH 

[Speech  of  Rev.  Dr.  Robert  Collyer  at  a  complimentary  breakfast 
given  to  Edwin  Booth  by  his  friends  and  admirers,  just  previous  to  his 
departure  for  Europe,  New  York  Cit}',  June  15,  iSSo.  Judge  John  R. 
Brady  presided.] 

Gentlemen  : — I  do  not  want  to  commence  my  speech  by 
remarking  that  I  do  not  know  about  the  theatre  and  the  stage, 
because,  if  I  said  that,  I  should  not  tell  the  truth.  I  go  to 
the  theatre  whenever  I  can  get  a  chance.  And  I  never  go 
when  a  man  like  our  friend  is  playing  that  I  am  not  filled 
M'ith  it.  I  forget  myself  and  laugh  and  cry  at  the  beck  of 
the  actor,  and  cannot  help  it.  [Applause.]  I  feel  that  I 
have  no  business  to  stand  outside  of  the  business  of  the 
evening,  and  criticise  it.  What  I  have  got  to  do  is  to  enter 
into  the  spirit  of  the  play,  and  have  what  I  call  a  "good 
time."  And  I  have  had  more  grand  times,  I  suppose, 
listening  to  Mr.  Booth  and  watching  him  than  to  any  other 
actor  living.     [Applause.] 

I  recognize  in  the  greatest  that  we  ministers  can  do,  and 
in  the  greatest  our  friend  can  do,  that  we  are  together  in 
this  great  work  of  impressing  the  human  heart  and  soul. 
The  word  he  utters,  the  word  we  utter  when  we  are  lifted 
to  the  height  of  a  great  occasion,  goes  to  the  same  place 
and  goes  on  the  same  errand,  and  while  "  I  magnify  mine 
office,"  and  believe  that  on  the  earth  there  is  no  higher  and 
no  better,   I    feel  at   the  same  time,  when   a  man   like  our 


THE  CHURCH  and  the  stage  267 

guest  interprets  some  mighty  mystery  of  life,— the  shadow 
of  it,  and  the  shine,  the  laughter  and  the  tears,  sin  and  sor- 
row and  repentance,  if  it  please  God  ;  there  is  no  grander 
coadjutor  of  the  minister  than  a  man  of  this  profession, 
who  can  teach  the  thought  he  carries  hidden  in  his  heart  by 
the  mightiest  genius  of  the  world.  [Applause.]  When  our 
friends  on  the  other  side  have  been  touched  by  the  genius 
of  our  guest,  as  we  have  been  touched  so  many  times,  then 
they  will  understand  that  there  is  something  loved  and 
cherished  in  the  hearts  of  America  besides  the  "  almighty 
dollar."     [Loud  cheers.] 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STAGE 

[Speech  of  Rev.  Dr.  Robert  Collyer  at  a  banquet  in  honor  of  Tommaso 
Salvini,  New  York  City,  April  26,  1S83.] 

Mr.  Chairman:— I  feel  a  little  touch  of  fear,  sir,  that,  in 
answering  to  this  sentiment,  "  The  Church  and  the  Stage," 
if  my  speech  does  not  seem  to  you  a  "  Comedy  of  Errors  "  it 
may  still  seem  to  me  to  be  "  Love's  Labor's  Lost,"  by  reason 
of  the  wide  distance  between  my  good-will  and  my  ability 
to  do  justice  to  such  a  theme. 

This  is  one  of  those  times  when  the  Church  should  give 
you  the  best  she  has,  and  you  should  have  found  a  bishop 
glad  and  proud  to  give  the  right  hand  of  fellowship  to  your 
noble  guest,  and  bid  him  God-speed.  But,  speaking  for  the 
Church,  so  far  as  a  heretic  may,  what  can  I  say  better  than 
that  the  Church  is  the  mother  and  the  Stage  is  the  daugh- 
ter, and  that,  after  so  long  an  estrangement,  they  should 
kiss  and  be  friends  ? 

The  mystery  plays,  to  which  the  Church  gave  birth  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  are  different  only  from  the  great  dramas  of 
the  present,  as  the  "  infant  muling  and  puking  in  the  nurse's 
arms  "  is  different  from  the  splendid  persons  dowered  with 
all  beauty  and  aglow  with  the  choicest  genius — men  like  Mr. 
Salvini — who  mirror  forth  our  time. 

Let  us  make  sure  that  we  are  of  one  blood,  and  then  we 
may  come  together  again.  The  mother  has  scorned,  and 
the  daughter  has  scoffed.     We  would  not  see  your  play,  and 


268  ROBERT   COLLYER 

you  would  not  hear  our  sermons.  It  is  all  a  sham,  we  have 
said,  your  pretence  of  passion.  And  you  have  been  of  the 
mind  of  a  manager  who  would  not  let  a  minister  have  his 
theatre  for  a  Sunday  evening  service,  saying :  "  No,  sir,  I 
will  not  have  so  poor  an  actor  on  my  stage.  It  will  demor- 
alize the  place."  Is  it  not  time  all  this  was  ended?  And 
if  the  Church  says  :  "  Why  should  I  mingle  my  gold  with 
such  dross?"  the  answer  is  that  some  very  good  Church- 
men have  not  thought  it  dross. 

I  was  greatly  charmed  last  summer,  sir,  by  a  sight  in  the 
mountains  of  four  stately  chestnuts  growing  from  one  root. 
I  loved  to  sit  in  the  shadow  first  of  one  and  then  of  another, 
and  to  watch  them  swaying  in  the  wind  and  kissing  each 
other  through  the  interlacing  branches.  So  I  have  thought 
it  is  with  the  drama,  the  finer  arts,  and  music,  and  with  re- 
ligious aspirations, — each  separate  in  some  sense  from  the 
other,  and  yet,  down  in  the  deepest  one,  blossoming  alike 
and  bearing  fruit,  shooting  up  into  the  light  together,  and 
glorifying  the  land  where  they  grow. 

I  love  mine  best ;  you  love  yours  best ;  but  I  can  see  in 
all  that  there  is  the  same  spirit  at  work,  to  make  men  wiser 
and  better.  I  thank  God  for  them  all,  and  look  for  the  time 
to  come  when  the  whole  world  will  hold  them  at  their  true 
worth. 


ROSCOE   CONKLING 


THE  STATE  OF  NEW  YORK 

[Speech  of  Roscoe  Conkling  at  the  sixty-ninth  anniversary  banquet  of 
the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22,  1874.  The 
President  of  the  Society,  Isaac  H.  Bailey,  presided,  and  introduced  Senator 
Conkling  in  these  words  :  "  Gentlemen,  the  third  regular  toast  is, — '  The 
State  of  New  York, — her  boundless  resources,  her  world-wide  commerce, 
and  the  steady  virtue  of  her  people  will  ever  maintain  her  proud  rank  as 
the  Empire  State  of  the  Union.'  The  gentleman  who  will  respond  to  this 
toast  has  a  right  to  speak  for  the  State  of  New  York,  for  the  State  of  New 
York  has  spoken  for  him  ou  two  occasions,  I  introduce  to  you  Senator 
Conkling."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  New  Eng- 
land Society  : — The  annals  of  this  honored  association, 
resplendent  as  they  are  with  so  much  that  is  illustrious  and 
remarkable,  record  no  instance,  to  my  knowledge,  in  which 
a  guest  at  a  New  England  dinner  ever  labored  under  em- 
barrassment or  diffidence.  Always  to  say,  and  say  readily 
and  easily,  the  right  thing  at  the  right  time,  has  till  now 
been  the  gift  of  all  embraced  in  your  boundless  hospitality. 
[Applause.]  At  last  selection  has  grown  careless  or  per- 
verse, and  one  has  been  bidden  wanting  in  all  that  beseems 
the  feast.  This  is  not  the  worst  of  it.  Bent  on  hurrying 
over  everything  dangerous  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  occa- 
sion, and  usurping  powers  not  conferred  on  him  by  your 
constitution  or  by-laws,  the  autocrat  of  the  table  gave  me 
timely  warning  to  be  brief.  I  will  not  tell  you  how  little  is 
the  drop  of  time  poured  out  to  me.  It  is  not  half  so  large 
as  to  hold  half  my  thanks  for  a  greeting  so  cordial.  [Ap- 
plause.] Being  thus  tethered  on  an  isthmus  not  wider  than 
a  hair,  I  was  blandly  and  generously  given  an  empire  for  a 
theme,  and  told  to  feel  perfectly  free  to  range  over  all  space. 
[Laughter.]     This  wonderful  invention  for  contracting  time, 

269 


270  ROSCOE    COX K LING 

and  expandinc^  its  use — a  sort  of  intro-convertible  scheme  of 
financiering — impressed  me  the  more  because  it  revealed  a 
trace  of  ingenuity  and  frugahty  notoriously  foreign  to  the 
New  England  character.  [Laughter.]  It  is  but  just  to 
your  President,  however,  to  acquit  him  of  all  feeling  to- 
ward me  in  this  effort  to  abridge  the  right  of  free  speech. 
He  acted,  no  doubt,  strictly  on  the  principle  which  led  the 
Puritans  to  oppose  bear-baiting — not  because  it  gave  pain  to 
the  bear,  but  because  it  gave  pleasure  to  the  people.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

The  toast  is  a  State — pardon  mc  if  I  say  in  some  respects 
the  first  Republican  State  in  Christendom — that  great  Com- 
monwealth whose  interests,  whose  honor,  and  whose  destiny 
are  so  dear  to  all  of  us,  whether  we  first  breathed  the  air  of 
New  England,  or  the  ashes  of  our  fathers  hallow  the  vales  of 
New  York.  What  trains  of  memories  and  hopes  such  a 
sentiment  ushers  in  !  We  have  no  pyramids  from  which 
forty  centuries  look  down  upon  us.  Two  centuries  ago  the 
agents  of  a  Greenland  company  disputed  with  Henry 
Hudson  whether  they  or  he  caught  the  first  glimpse  of  rocks 
and  sedges  afterward  bartered  for  a  trunk  of  beans — rocks 
and  sedges  ranged  by  wild  beasts  and  wild  men,  now  the 
home  of  a  mighty  people,  and  the  site  of  a  world-trod  city, 
in  whose  streets  eighty-four  languages  and  dialects  are 
spoken. 

Three-quarters  of  a  century  ago,  progress  had  not  yet 
made  such  headway  as  to  dig  a  canal  for  drainage  in  this 
city,  where  now  the  pavements  of  Canal  Street  are  worn  by 
the  feet  of  millions,  and  trampled  by  a  traffic  conspicuous  in 
the  ledgers  of  the  world.  In  the  lifetime  of  men  still  living, 
in  three-quarters  of  the  State,  untrodden  and  trackless 
forests,  unknown  lakes  and  rivers,  and  undiscovered  fields 
and  mines,  were  wra;>t  in  solitudes  where  now  temples  of 
charity  and  religion,  temples  of  learning,  and  temples  of 
mammon  outglitter  each  other  in  the  splendor  of  a  won- 
drous civilization.  A  wondrous  civilization,  not  merely  be- 
cause its  energy  has  sent  out  the  restless  foot  of  adventure 
to  traverse  every  continent,  visit  every  island,  vex  every 
sea — not  merely  because  of  its  opulence  and  enterprise, 
which  for  seventy  years  nourished  the  nation  with  ninety 
per  cent,  of  the  nation's  revenues,  and,  while  an  income  tax 


THE    STATE    OF    NEW   YORK  27 1 

was  gathered,  poured  into  the  treasury,  from  one  eleventh 
of  the  population  of  the  United  States,  one-third  of  the 
total  tax.  A  civilization  wondrous,  not  merely  because 
the  men  it  marshalled  and  the  wealth  it  had  amassed  saved 
the  nation  in  a  conflict  described  by  a  British  statesman,  the 
other  day,  in  a  speech  in  this  city,  as  the  greatest  war  of 
the  century — he  might  have  said  in  some  respects,  the 
greatest  war  that  ever  shook  the  world.  [Applause.]  I  say, 
saved  the  nation — is  it  too  much  to  assert  that  the  State  of 
New  York  could  not  have  been  spared  in  the  struggle  for 
the  Union?     [Applause.] 

War,  in  our  times,  is,  in  great  part,  a  problem  of  money. 
The  battles  which  the  Crusaders  fought  and  the  troubadours 
sang  were  all  before  the  invention  of  the  ponderous  ma- 
chinery and  costly  appliances  of  modern  warfare.  Valor 
and  devotion  alone  cannot  equip  and  maintain  armies  now, 
and  at  last  the  question  is,  who  can  pay,  and  feed,  and 
clothe,  and  arm  the  most  men  ?  When  that  fact  is  ascer- 
tained, the  fight  is  over.  Thus  it  comes  to  pass,  the  last 
issues  of  war  must  be  resolved  by  taxation,  by  credit,  and 
by  money  ;  and  I  claim  for  the  soldiers  and  seamen  of  New 
York,  and  for  her  taxpayers  and  capitalists,  a  share  in  the 
glory,  the  liberty,  and  the  nationalit}^  which,  without  them, 
could  not  have  been  won.  [Applause.]  A  civilization, 
wondrous,  not  merely  because  its  brief  career  is  luminous 
with  the  names  of  heroes,  patriots,  sages,  statesmen,  and 
jurists,  whose  memorials  the  world  will  not  willingly  let  die, 
but,  above  all,  because  it  has  lifted  higher  and  higher  the 
standard  of  liberty,  humanity,  morality  and  right.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

Many  would  smile  at  the  idea  that,  as  a  rule,  men  in  our 
day  have  grown  better.  Many  insist  that  decadence,  and 
not  improvement,  in  morality  is  the  tendency  of  our  times. 
I  will  not  argue  this.  Curious  witnesses  might  easily  be 
called.  I  recently  met  with  a  report,  made  in  1695  to  the 
Lord  Bishop  of  London,  by  Rev.  John  Miller,  a  chaplain  in 
the  army,  after  a  residence  of  some  years  in  the  Province 
of  New  York.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  God-fearing  man  ; 
it  is  not  comforting  to  believe  him  a  truth-telling  man. 
[Laughter.]  I  read  from  this  book  as  the  lawyer  read 
Blackstoneto  the  justice  of  the  peace — not  to  show  that  the 


2  72  ROSCOE    COXKLING 

justice  was  wrong,  but  only  to  show  what  an  old  fool  Black, 
stone  was,  [Laughter.]  He  sets  forth  this  list  of  short- 
comings falling  under  his  own  observation  :  "  First.  Wick- 
edness and  irreligion  in  the  inhabitants.  Second.  Want  of 
ministers.  Third.  Difference  of  opinion  in  religion.  Fourth 
Civil  dissension.  Fifth.  The  heathenism  of  the  Indians. 
Sixth.  The  neighborhood  of  Canada."  He  portrays  all  six 
of  these  sins  vividly.  Five  of  them  need  not  be  noticed, 
they  are  so  nearly  obsolete.  No  sane  man  in  this  presence 
dare  pretend  that  we  are  still  "  wanting  in  ministers." 
[Laughter.]  As  to  "  differences  of  opinion  in  religion,"  we 
have  none  to  speak  of.  [Laughter.]  As  to  "  civil  dissen- 
sion," there  will  be  none  till  the  next  election,  and  then, 
if  they  be  only  "  civils,"  we  will  cure  them  by  the  ballot — a 
safe  and  sovereign  remedy  for  such  disorders — invented 
since  good  Mr.  Miller  wrote.  The  "  heathenism  of  the  In- 
dians "  has  nearly  died  out  in  this  State  ;  soon  even  Chris- 
tian Indians  will  be  few,  and  found  only  far  toward  the  set- 
ting sun.  "  The  neighborhood  of  Canada,"  to  be  sure,  re- 
mains a  case  for  moral  suasion,  and  if  it  had  proved  as  easy 
to  change  the  map  of  America  as  it  has  been  found  to 
change  the  map  of  Europe,  we  might  do  away  with  Canada 
altogether.     [Applause.] 

But  hear  a  few  words  of  what  this  witness  says  about  the 
prevailing  bad  morals  of  his  day.  Evidently  the  generation 
he  knew,  died,  "  no  son  of  theirs  succeeding."  They  may 
have  gone  back  to  England,  or  gone  West.  Decidedly 
they  left  no  descendants  here  or  hereabouts.  This  pious 
scribe  thus  descants:  "  The  first  is  the  wickedness  and  irre- 
ligion of  the  inhabitants,  which  abounds  in  all  parts  of  the 
province,  and  appears  in  so  many  shapes,  constituting  so 
many  sorts.  In  a  soil  so  rank  as  this,  no  marvel  if  the  Evil 
One  find  a  ready  entertainment  for  the  seed  he  is  minded 
to  cast  in  ;  and  from  a  people  so  inconstant,  and  regardless 
of  heaven  and  holy  things,  no  wonder  if  God  withdraw  His 
grace,  and  give  them  up  a  prey  to  those  temptations  which 
they  so  industriously  seek  to  embrace  ;  hence  it  is,  there- 
fore, that  their  natural  corruption,  without  check  or  hin- 
drance, is,  by  frequents  acts,  improved  into  habits  most  evil 
in  the  practise,  and  difificult  in  the  correction.  One  of 
which,  and  the  first  I  am  minded  to  speak  of,  is  drunken- 


THE   STATE   OF   NEW   YORK  273 

ness,  which,  though  of  itself  a  great  sin,  is  yet  aggravated 
in  that  it  is  an  occasion  of  many  others.  'Tis  in  this  coun- 
try a  common  tiling,  even  for  the  meanest  persons,  as  soon 
as  the  bounty  of  God  has  furnished  them  with  a  plentiful 
crop,  to  turn  what  they  can,  as  soon  as  may  be,  into  money 
and  that  money  into  drink,  at  the  same  time  when  their 
families  at  home  have  nothing  but  rags  to  protect  their 
bodies  from  the  winter's  cold  ;  nay,  if  the  fruits  of  their 
plantations  be  such  as  are  by  their  own  immediate  labor 
convertible  into  liquor,  such  as  cider,  perry,  etc.,  they  have 
scarce  the  patience  to  stay  till  it  is  fit  for  drinking,  but,  in- 
viting their  pot  companions,  they  all  of  them,  neglecting 
whatsoever  work  they  are  about,  set  to  it  together,  and 
give  not  over  till  they  have  drunk  it  off.  And  to  these  sot- 
tish engagements  they  will  make  nothing  to  ride  ten  or 
twenty  miles,  and  at  the  conclusion  of  one  debauch  another 
generally  is  appointed,  except  their  stock  of  liquor  fail 
them.  Nor  are  the  country  people  only  guilty  of  this  vice, 
but  they  are  equalled,  nay,  surpassed,  by  many  in  the  City 
of  New  York,  whose  daily  practise  is  to  frequent  the  tav- 
erns, and  to  carouse  and  game  their  night  employment. 
This  course  is  the  ruin  and  destruction  of  many  merchants, 
especially  those  of  the  younger  sort,  who,  carrying  over 
with  them  a  stock,  whether  as  factors  or  on  their  own  ac- 
count, spend  even  to  prodigality,  till  they  find  themselves 
bankrupt  ere  they  are  aware." 

He  goes  on  to  speak  of  cursing  and  swearing,  of  open 
and  shameless  immorality,  of  dishonesty,  of  sloth,  and  prof- 
ligacy among  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor,  as  comprising 
the  body  of  the  times.  Unfortunately  the  witness  is  not 
solitary,  and  when  we  abate  and  jest  away  all  we  may,  does 
not  something  in  this  quaint  production  seriously  tell  us 
that  progress  has  been  made  in  lifting  society  from  the 
groveling  instincts  and  low  desires  of  an  earlier  age? 

But  I  have  dwelt  on  the  past  and  the  present,  when  I 
should  have  spoken  of  the  future.  States  cannot  live  on 
the  past,  more  than  political  parties.  Chancellor  Kent  says, 
speaking  of  families,  that  they  "must  repose  upon  the  vir- 
tue of  their  descendants  for  the  perpetuity  of  their  fame." 
The  leader  of  an  Arctic  band  said  to  his  followers  :  "  Who- 
ever sits  down  will  sleep,  and  whoever  sleeps  will  perish." 


274  KOSCOE    COXKLING 

So  will  it  be  with  States.  [Applause]  This  is  a  law  of 
matter,  mind  and  heart.  At  this  moment  the  times  are 
full  of  signs  and  warnings  for  New  York,  threatening  her 
commercial  and  material  primacy.  I  speak  to  those  who 
know  better  than  I  the  many  things  which  might  here  be 
said  ;  let  me  remind  you  of  one  of  them  :  "  Clinton's 
Ditch  "  was  dug  to  bring  the  products  of  one  part  of  this 
one  State  to  another.  Soon  this  great  work  of  statesman- 
ship and  forecast  transcended  its  mission,  and  bore  to  the 
sea  from  far  Western  States  a  traffic  greater  than  that  of 
the  River  Rhine,  flowing  through  seven  sovereignties  in  the 
heart  of  Europe.  The  Erie  Canal,  enriching  and  draining 
vast  regions,  poured  like  a  golden  river  into  the  City  of 
New  York.  Railways  came  and  railways  doubled,  but 
there  came  also,  at  the  rate  of  a  State  a  year  from  distant 
lands,  men  and  women  to  till  that  fertile  basin  between  the 
two  watersheds  of  the  continent,  stretching  2,000  miles  north, 
and  south,  and  1,400  miles  east  and  west.  There  in  the 
valley  of  the  Mississippi  is,  and  is  to  be,  the  granary  of  the 
world  ;  there  is  the  food  of  the  nations  ;  it  is  not  wanted 
where  it  grows,  and  it  is  bound  to  get  out  and  go  where  it 
is  wanted.  The  value  of  property  in  this  country  is  not  in 
what  it  is,  but  in  where  it  is.  Speak  the  cereals  of  the 
West  into  the  port  of  New  York  without  cost  in  moving 
them,  and  the  national  debt  would  be  like  dust  in  the 
scales.     [Applause.] 

This  cannot  be  done,  but  it  can  and  will  be  done — nay, 
it  is  being  done  in  part.  Transportation  can  be  cheapened  ! 
it  will  be  cheapened,  and  the  tracks  will  be  marked  anew 
for  a  colossal  commerce.  Shall  New  York  have  it  ?  Shall 
Canada  have  it?  Shall  Pennsjdvania and  Maryland  have  it? 
Who  shall  have  it  ?  Men  hear  me  who  will  do  much  to 
decide  the  question.  Terminal  facilities  in  this  city,  ele- 
vators, harbor  accommodations,  sea-going  opportunities — 
these  are  factors  in  the  problem,  as  well  as  canal  and  railway 
policy  and  advantages  of  route.  Here  is  a  huge,  unfinished 
work  for  this  State  and  this  city,  and  he  who  lives  for  five 
years  will  see  a  vast  stake  won  or  lost  by  what  shall  yet  be 
done  or  left  undone.     [Applause.] 

This  subject  urges  itself  upon  us  in  a  double  aspect.  Lay- 
ing aside  the  inquiry  who  shall  profit  by  handling  an  untold 


THE    STATE    OF    NEW  YORK  275 

traffic,  the  matter  of  cheap  transportation  touches  the  pros- 
perity of  the  West;  and  whatever  touches  the  prosperity 
of  any  section  or  State  of  the  Union  touches  tiie  prosperity 
of  New  York.  [Applause.]  Nothing  affecting  the  welfare 
of  any  community  in  the  nation  can  be  without  influence 
on  this  metropolis.  "  All  roads  lead  to  Rome,"  and  mad 
and  guilty  as  sectional  hate  or  jealousy  must  be  everywhere 
in  our  land,  nowhere  could  it  be  so  besotted  as  here.  The 
capital  of  New  York  is  planted  from  sea  to  sea — from  the 
St.  Lawrence  to  the  Gulf.  There  is  not  a  State  or  city  in 
all  our  borders  which  can  be  blighted  without  shrivelling  us. 
The  bonds  of  every  State,  the  bonds  of  cities,  the  bonds  of 
the  railways  that  gridiron  the  West  and  the  South,  are  held 
in  great  sums  in  the  East  and  in  the  North.  Whatever 
wounds  any  member  of  the  Union  we  feel  also  ;  whatever 
fertilizes  and  enriches  the  most  distant  field,  invigorates  this 
commonwealth  from  Buffalo  to  Montauk.  [Applause.] 
Whenever  help  is  needed,  it  is  the  highest  policy  for  New 
York  to  help,  whether  in  one  quarter  or  another,  as  far  as 
prudence  points  a  way.  The  South  cannot  sit  in  the  ashes 
of  a  fire  kindled  by  herself,  and  not  enfeeble  every  Northern 
State.  The  South  cannot  grope  in  the  desolation  of  shat- 
tered institutions,  without  unbalancing  the  healthful  forces 
of  all  the  nation.  When  she  can  see  and  feel  this,  and  know 
that  every  patriot  in  the  land  longs  for  her  resurrection, 
longs  for  the  time  when  in  all  her  borders  the  Constitution 
and  laws,  and  right,  and  order,  and  peace,  and  common-sense, 
shall  reign,  then,  if  she  can  rule  her  own  spirit,  her  wealth 
will  be  our  wealth,  her  welfare  our  welfare.      [Applause.] 

But  prosperity,  like  charity,  begins  at  home.  Who  would 
have  the  rose  themselves  must  grasp  the  thorn.  Every 
community  must  trim  its  own  vineyard.  [Applause.] 
Rapid  transit  on  Manhattan  Island  would  instantly  kindle 
new  life  here  and  send  it  through  a  circuit  sweeping  far  be- 
yond this  State.  [Applause.]  Regeneration  in  finance, 
sound  and  wholesome  methods  in  business,  thorough  and 
frugal  management  of  public  affairs.  State  and  Municipal — 
these  are  some  of  the  matters  in  which  New  York  should 
lead.     [Applause] 

The  drama  of  the  Western  Hemisphere  is  only  begun  ; 
the  scene  thus  far  enacted  might  be  entitled  "  breaking  the 


2/6  ROSCOE    CONKLING 

way  for  future  ages."  Let  those  now  on  the  stage  act  well 
their  parts,  and  when  the  portals  are  closed  behind  us,  New- 
England  dinners  will  be  celebrated  in  New  York  amid  a 
grandeur  yet  more  worthy  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  brotherhood  of  man — a  grandeur  which  will  endure 
when  dynasties  have  decayed  and  diadems  have  crumbled. 
[Apj^lause.] 


FREDERIC  RENE  COUDERT 


THE  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK 

[Speech  of  Frederic  R.  Coudert  at  the  seventy-ninth  anniversary  ban- 
quet of  the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22, 
1884.  Gen.  Stewart  L.  Woodford,  President  of  the  society,  was  in  the 
chair,  and  said,  in  introducing  the  speaker  :  "  The  teachers  of  our  old 
politics  taught  that  from  the  farms  the  safety  of  the  future  grew.  The 
conditions  of  our  progress  show,  by  the  sure  figures  of  the  census,  that 
more  than  one-quarter  of  the  people  of  this  State,  and  nearly  one-quarter 
of  our  Legislature,  is  chosen  from  the  cities  of  the  State.  As  in  the  Italy 
of  old  times,  so  in  the  New  York  of  to-day,  the  liberty  of  the  past  is  to  be 
kept  by  the  cities  of  the  present,  and  that  leads  by  New  England  logic 
to  our  next  toast  :  '  Our  City  of  New  York.  Great  are  its  responsibili- 
ties, immense  is  its  power.'  None  better  than  our  own  New  York  citizen, 
Mr.  Coudert,  could  respond  to  the  toast  of  the  '  City  of  New  York.'  "] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen:  —  It  is  not  to 
be  reckoned  among  the  smallest  privileges  of  the  City 
of  New  York  that  the  New  England  Society  should 
once  in  every  year  pat  it  on  the  back  and  say — or  cause  to 
be  said — a  good  word  in  its  favor.  If  our  city  has  done 
anything  to  deserve  this  annual  praise,  it  has  not  been  over- 
taxed, misgoverned,  and  maligned  in  vain.  On  this  one 
day  she  may  forget  the  tribulations  of  the  other  three  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four,  and  comfort  herself  with  the  reflection 
that  the  descendants  of  the  Puritans,  having  taken  her  under 
their  patronage,  find  her  fair  enough  to  admire  and  to 
praise.  [Applause.]  There  is  something  in  the  City  of 
New  York  worthy  of  commendation  after  all.  In  her  com- 
position the  most  various  elements  of  the  world  have  en- 
tered. Dutch,  English,  French,  Irish,  Germans,  have  been 
boiled  in  the  cauldron  of  her  progress;  they  simmered  to- 
gether in  the  process  of  harmonious  assimilation,  until  the 
diverse  and  discordant  elements  have  become  thoroughly 
welded  and  fused  into  unity.     The  product  resulting  thcre- 

277 


278  FREDERIC  RENE  COUDERT 

from  is  unique  in  our  history  or  in  any  history,  and  yet  the 
result  lias  been  a  logical  and  providential  one.  Cities,  like 
States,  must  develop  according  to  the  laws  of  their  origin, 
and  no  city  founded  by  our  Dutch  forefathers,  and  impressed 
with  the  stamp  of  their  honest  independence  and  stub- 
born patriotism,  could  fail  to  produce  a  result  which  would 
benefit  mankind.  [Cheers.]  Other  nations  came  in  to  pur- 
sue the  task  that  they  had  commenced  ;  but  the  foundations 
were  laid  by  them,  and  upon  these  the  structure  was  built. 

New  York  has  ever  been  the  chosen  spot  and  home  of 
the  stranger.  She  erected  no  barriers  to  exclude  him,  and 
whether  he  came  alone  or  with  an  army  at  his  back,  he  was 
always  cordially  received.  New  York,  indeed,  never  made 
strenuous  objections  to  being  captured,  and  she  seems 
rather  to  have  prided  herself  upon  the  graceful  ease  with 
which  she  accomplished  her  various  surrenders.  The  Dutch 
surrendered  to  the  English,  and  the  English  to  the  Dutch  ; 
and  then  again  the  Dutch  to  the  English,  and  the  English 
to  the  Americans,  and  the  Americans  to — but  no,  the 
Americans  never  surrendered  to  any  one  [laughter]  ;  and  if 
certain  changes  have  taken  place  in  the  distribution  of 
power,  it  is  due  to  a  friendly  acquiescence  in  the  quiet 
assumption  with  which  friends  from  abroad,  under  the  law- 
ful form  of  the  ballot,  relieved  the  native  population  from 
the  dangers,  cares,  temptations  and  tribulations  of  ofifice. 

It  is  only  just  to  say,  however,  that  none  of  these  sur- 
renders were  accomplished  without  compensation — to  wit, 
the  honors  of  war.  The  Dutch  kindly  accorded  them  to 
the  departing  Briton  ;  the  latter,  a  few  years  later,  to  the 
surrendering  Dutchman, — who  surrendered,  but  never  de- 
parted. The  English  received  the  honors  of  war  from  the 
Americans,  and  all  appeared  satisfied  that  the  fullest  re- 
quirements of  the  situation  had  been  adequately  met.  The 
only  exception  that  I  can  find  is  in  the  case  of  General 
Washington,  who — after  an  unpleasant  and  unsatisfactory 
debate  with  the  British  on  Long  Island — passed  through 
New  York  on  his  way  to  Westchester  County.  The  ur- 
gency of  his  pending  engagements  and  the  insufficiency  of 
the  town  accommodations  compelled  him  to  leave  in  some 
haste.  [Laughter.]  Hence  his  failure  to  receive  the  honors 
of  war,  which  would  no  doubt  have  been   accorded  had  he 


THE   CITY   OF   NEW   YORK  279 

chosen  to  await  them.  But  there  were  occasions  when  the 
Cunctator  displayed  great  ahicrity.     This  was  one. 

If  we  look  back  into  history,  and  examine  the  various 
nations  that  flourished  in  the  world — I  mean  at  the  time 
that  our  city  was  founded — we  will  be  disposed  to  agree 
that  of  all  the  great  ones  of  the  earth,  none  could  have 
suited  us  so  well  as  ancestors  as  the  Dutch.  [Laughter.] 
The  English  were  too  full  of  business  to  take  proper  care 
of  our  young  city.  Besides,  they  were  a  bit  arrogant  and 
proud.  Although  they  had  not  done  much  toward  building 
up  Boston,  they  had,  no  doubt,  some  premonition  of  the 
brilliant  success  that  awaited  them  in  that  direction. 
Ireland  had  not  yet  become  one  of  the  ruling  nations  of  the 
globe,  and  was  not  fully  educated  at  that  time  to  the  point 
of  ruling  any  given  city  (out  of  Ireland)  on  the  most  favor- 
able  terms.  Germany  and  Spain  were  full  of  war,  religion, 
blood  and  bluster.  They  had  more  land  than  they  knew 
what  to  do  with.  France  was  struggling  to  found  and  pre- 
serve those  vast  colonies  which  still  retain,  after  a  century  of 
separation,  her  language,  religion,  traditions  and  affection. 
Besides,  all  these  countries  spoke  a  language  more  or  less 
intelligible  to  some  one.  As  for  the  Dutch — well,  Boston 
tried  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  old  Petrus,  the  one-legged  Gov- 
ernor, but  it  was  of  no  avail.  The  grim  Dutchman  wrote 
the  Bostonian  a  despatch  in  alleged  Low  Dutch.  That 
ended  the  quarrel.  [Laughter.]  How  can  you  fight  a  man 
whose  missive  may  be  full  of  respect  and  affection  ?  Oh  ! 
you  may  say  an  interpreter  might  have  been  procured.  Pre- 
cisely— that  is  what  the  Englishman  tried  to  do.  He  did 
procure  one,  but  the  interpreter  swore  that  he  would  not 
(and  probably  he  could  not)  translate  the  despatch.  War 
was  averted,  and  Boston  was  saved  from  annihilation. 
[Applause  and  laughter,] 

The  Dutch,  then,  planted  the  tree,  but  all  the  nations 
that  I  have  mentioned  watered  the  young  sapling.  The 
strangers  of  other  lands  who  came  to  our  midst  brought 
with  them  those  traditions  of  their  own  which  are  best 
worth  preserving.  Whether  it  is  that  the  exile's  heart  is 
too  full  of  home  and  regret  and  misgivings  of  the  future  to 
contain  anything  not  worth  preserving;  whether  it  be  that 
the  fire  of  persecution  and  of  tribulation  burns  out  of  his 


28o         FREDERIC  RENE  COUDERT 

nature  all  but  the  best  of  that  nature,  I  know  not;  but  cer- 
tain it  is  that  whether  English  or  Dutch,  or  Scotch  or  Irish, 
or  German  or  French,  they  all  brought  with  them  those 
traditions  and  practices  which  were  most  calculated  to  en- 
rich and  strengthen  our  young  city.  And  from  these  ele- 
ments a  new  combination  was  formed,  which  has  made  the 
City  of  New  York  the  greatest  and  best  of  the  continent. 
[Loud  applause.] 

I  am  aware  that  other  cities  have  claimed — I  know  that 
one  provincial  town  especially  does  claim,  in  entire  good 
faith — the  precedence  if  not  the  monopoly  of  early  patriot- 
ism and  of  early  self-denial  in  the  good  cause.  New  York 
City  is  so  rich  in  present  goods  and  past  glories  that  she 
has,  perhaps  with  excessive  indulgence,  looked  smilingly 
upon  the  earnest  advocates  of  these  untenable  claims.  But 
historic  truth  cannot  afford  to  be  thus  blinded.  She  will 
tell  you  that  this  island  city  was  the  first  to  throw  down  the 
gauntlet  to  royal  armies  and  to  royal  fleets.  Rhode  Island 
and  Maryland,  especially  the  latter,  may  have  worn  before 
her  the  crown  of  religious  toleration  ;  but  even  in  the  early 
days,  when  religious  freedom  was  almost  unknown  to  the 
best  and  wisest  men,  this  soil  upon  which  we  stand  to-night 
was  open  to  the  persecuted  of  all  climates.  I  shall  not 
speak  of  the  sectaries  of  Massachusetts,  driven  from  their 
homes  by  persecutions  which  it  is  not  pleasant  to  think  of 
now  ;  but  Jews  and  Dissenters  the  world  over,  fleeing  from 
the  cruelties  which  they  endured  for  conscience'  sake,  found 
here  a  home  and  safety.     [Cheers.] 

We  hear  much  of  the  famous  Boston  tea-party,  the  com- 
memoration of  which  is  as  necessary  to  a  New  England 
banquet  as  the  conventional  soup  or  the  traditional  salad. 
New  York,  it  is  true,  did  not  dramatize  the  performance  or 
emphasize  its  importance  with  the  adjuncts  of  Indian  dis- 
guises and  a  moonlit  night.  No,  our  practical  fathers  ob- 
jected to  the  odious  tea,  and  manifested  their  objection 
by  quietly  moving  it  into  the  stream,  in  the  broad  light  of 
day,  in  the  ordinary  accoutrements  of  business  men,  and 
there  dumped  it  into  the  harbor  with  as  little  ceremony  or 
concealment  as  our  own  people  of  to-day  dump  other  and 
more  objectionable  material  into  the  same  waters.  [Laugh- 
ter.]    It  will  be  some  satisfaction  to  remember,  if  our  noble 


THE    CITY    OF    NEW   YORK  28 1 

harbor  is  ever  choked  up  by  these  repeated  Invasions,  that 
the  foundation  was  hiid  with  expensive  material  and  patri- 
otic purpose.     [Laughter  and  cheers.] 

But  why  dwell  upon  this  ?  Pray  tell  me  in  what  partic- 
ular our  city  has  not  been  the  first  to  sound  the  clarion  of 
rebellion  against  tyranny  ;  to  speak  in  loud  tones  for  civil 
liberty  and  political  independence?  More  than  two  hun- 
dred years  ago  the  merchants  of  New  York  declared  that 
they  must  have  a  voice  and  a  vote  in  the  administration  of 
public  business;  and  they  meant  it,  and  showed  their  good 
faith  by  stubborn  resistance  until  final  success.  Who  main- 
tained the  liberty  of  the  press  by  first  consecrating  its  im- 
portance through  the  verdict  of  a  jury?  Who  first  opposed 
by  arms  the  odious  claim  that  citizens  could  be  impressed 
by  force  into  the  military  and  naval  service  ?  Who  led  the 
battle  against  the  Stamp  Act,  and  declared  it  to  be  the  duty 
of  the  colonies  to  consider  as  an  act  of  tyranny  any  viola- 
tion of  her  rights  and  privileges?  New  York,  ever  New 
York  !  [Ringing  applause.]  To  sum  all  up,  who  first  shed 
the  blood  of  her  citizens  in  defence  of  America,  if  not  New 
York?  And  more  than  all  this,  with  prophetic  vision  look- 
ing to  the  necessities  of  the  city  that  they  were  founding 
and  building  up,  while  writs  were  still  issued  in  the  king's 
name,  she  taught  us  that  the  true  secret  of  prosperity,  dig- 
nity and  freedom  lay  in  the  vigilance  of  the  citizens  ;  and 
then  and  there  the  citizens  of  New  York  established  a 
"Committee  of  One  Hundred,"  which  worked  efTectually  and 
well,  and,  having  overturned  the  king's  authority,  established 
free  government  in  its  stead.     How  history  repeats   itself! 

But  the  glory  of  New  York  in  the  past  was  but  the 
promise  of  the  fruit  that  was  to  ripen  in  the  future.  [Ap- 
plause.] She  stands  to-day  firm  in  the  enjoyment  of  those 
great  truths  and  blessings  which  cost  so  much  blood  and 
treasure  to  secure.  All  the  noble  tendencies  of  her  origin 
have  been  developed.  No  city  exceeds  her  in  wealth,  edu- 
cation, intelligence  and  prosperity.  None  approaches  her 
in  that  which  best  proves  her  excellence — I  mean  her  charity. 
[Cheers.]  To  enumerate  the  manifold  channels  in  which 
that  ever-flowing  charity  pursues  its  daily  course  would  far 
exceed  my  limits.  It  covers  every  form  of  human  suffer- 
ing.    It  embraces  every  nationality  and  creed — it  knows  no 


282  FREDERIC  RENE  COUDERT 

limitation.  The  great  heart  of  our  city  has  a  throb  of  pity 
for  every  form  of  wretchedness.  Nay,  going  beyond  this 
sympathy  with  human  misfortune,  one  of  our  citizens  was 
the  first  to  discover  that  the  dumb  beast  appealed  to  the 
humanity  of  man,  and  that  his  duty  was  not  complete  until 
he  heeded  that  appeal.  [Cheers.]  The  helpless  child  who 
was  elsewhere  left  to  the  cruel  mercies  of  the  law,  or  to  the 
isolated  exercise  of  religious  or  individual  bounty,  became 
the  object  of  new  and  enlightened  solicitude.  Our  thrifty 
citizens,  quite  ready  to  scrutinize  with  jealous  care  the  ex- 
penditure of  their  money  in  taxation,  have  ever  grumbled 
and  still  grumble  with  Anglo-Saxon  heartiness  at  all  tributes 
that  are  unreasonable  and  extravagant.  But  where  the 
education  of  our  people  is  concerned,  their  voice  is  silent, 
except  to  urge  renewed  and  increased  expenditure.  The 
descendants  of  the  men  who  shed  blood  to  resist  a  petty  ex- 
action because  it  was  against  their  rights,  spend  four  mil- 
lions and  more  every  year  that  all  may  be  bountifully  sup- 
plied with  intellectual  food.  Her  rapidly  increasing  wealth 
is  surpassed  by  the  rapidly  accumulating  monuments  of 
her  generosity.  Libraries,  hospitals,  drinking-fountains,  art 
associations,  relieve,  enlighten,  encourage  and  delight  those 
on  whom  fortune  has  never  smiled.  Freely  has  she  received 
and  freely  does  she  give,  remembering  that  of  all  virtues 
charity  is  the  greatest.  That  there  are  no  dark  spots  in  the 
picture,  who  will  pretend  ?  But  Ave  all  know  and  feel  that 
we  may  build  much  hope  for  the  future  on  the  glories  of 
the  past  and  the  greatness  of  the  present.  No  hand  is 
strong  enough  to  destroy  our  city,  except  that  of  her  own 
children.     [Prolonged  applause.] 


OUR  CLIENTS 


[Speech  of  Frederic  R.  Coudert  at  a  dinner  given  to  Benjamin 
Sillinian  by  the  Bar  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  to  commemorate  the 
sixtieth  anniversary  of  his  admission  to  the  Bar.  The  banquet  was  given 
in  New  York  Cit}',  May  24,  18S9.  Mr.  Coudert  responded  to  the 
toast,  "  Our  Clients."] 

Mr.  President  and  other  Venerable  Gentlemen  : — 
I   am  grateful  to  you  for  this  undeserved  honor.     I  have 


OUR   CLIENTS  283 

few  reminiscences.  I  do  not  know  anything  about  the  past, 
very  Httle  about  the  future,  and  less  about  the  present.  I 
liad  hoped  that  I  would  have  some  comfort  in  the  compan- 
ionship of  my  brother  Carter  [James  C.  Carter],  but  when 
he  got  up  claiming  to  be  sans  teeth,  sans  eyes,  sans  taste, 
sans  everything,  when  he  invoked  the  favor  of  the  au- 
dience and  placed  his  plea  wholly  upon  age,  I  felt  that  I 
was  alone  here  to  plead  the  privilege  of  infancy  and  to 
invoke  the  benefit   of  the  statute.     [Laughter.] 

I  do  not  know,  I  repeat,  a  great  deal  about  the  great  men 
who  have  passed  before  us.  I  have  no  opinion  to  speak  of. 
In  fact,  my  opinion  on  that  subject  is  vague,  and  its  value 
easily  susceptible  of  illustration.  One  gentleman  to-night 
mentioned  a  great  advocate,  George  Wood.  I  can  re- 
member, looking  back  to  early  boyhood,  that  venerable 
figure  and  recall  speaking  to  one  of  his  contemporaries 
about  him.  He  said,  "Yes;  a  client  of  mine  got  an  opinion 
from  him  once."  "  Well,"  I  said,  "  how  was  it  done;  how 
much  did  he  charge  ?  " — for  even  in  those  early  days  the 
professional  instinct  asserted  itself.  [Laughter.]  "  Well," 
he  said,  "  my  client  went  to  him  and  said,  Mr.  Wood,  I 
would  like  to  have  your  opinion  on  these  papers."  "  Give 
me  the  papers ;  come  back  to-morrow."  And  he  went 
back  the  next  day  and  Mr.  Wood  said,  "  Fifty  dollars,"  and 
nothing  more.  The  client  was  intelligent,  and  assumed 
that  he  should  pay  him  that  sum,  which  he  did.  "  What 
about  my  papers  ?  "  he  said.  "  They  are  not  worth  a  damn," 
said  he.     [Laughter.] 

If  this  is  a  sample  of  the  methodical  business  practices  of 
the  ancient  Bar,  I  am  not  surprised  that  our  learned  and 
distinguished  brother  should  have  attained  prosperity  and 
distinction  both  together.  I  attribute  it  rather  to  that,  than 
to  the  happy  accident  of  his  sleeping  in  the  solitudes  of 
Brooklyn  of  which  you  have  spoken. 

That  this  is  a  great  day  for  Brooklyn  we  all  realize.  The 
hordes  of  Brooklyn  men  who  have  appeared  to-night, 
drawn  by  the  prospects  of  this  feast  and  the  allurements, — 
they  were  bound  to  be  deceived, — the  allurements  of  a 
speech  apiece,  are  such  as  have  never  been  known  before. 
The  first  arrangement  for  the  programme  of  this  evening's 
speech-making  was  the   best.     I    understood  that   our  di:^ 


284  FREDERIC  RENE  COUDERT 

tinguished  friend  was  to  be  partitioned.  You  will  observe 
that  out  of  respect  to  him  I  adopt  the  word  usually  applied  to 
large  communities.  One  was  to  have  "  Our  Brother,  his 
Mental  Qualities,"  another  his  "  Moral  Qualities,"  another  his 
"  Stomach,"  and  so  on.  It  was  found  that  there  was  enough 
of  him  to  go  around,  but  the  difficulty  was  that  every 
Brooklyn  man  wanted  at  least  twenty  minutes  and  a  com- 
putation of  at  least  eighty  speeches  at  twenty  minutes  could 
easily  be  made.  Thus  it  had  to  be  abandoned,  and  the  desul- 
tory course  which  we  have  taken  to-night  was  perforce  se- 
lected. You  now  understand  the  unhappy  faces  of  our  Brook- 
lyn friends,  and  may  give  them  your  sympathy.     [Laughter.] 

Let  me  tell  them,  however,  that  the  manufacture  of  a 
speech  is  never  in  vain.  Either  they  can  find  a  client  who 
will  take  it  upon  reasonable  terms,  or  they  may  discharge 
it  on  some  future  occasion. 

I  read  but  recently  a  story  in  Plutarch's  "  Morals,"  a  work 
that  I  have  no  doubt  Mr.  Silliman  reads  in  his  leisure  mo- 
ments. There  was  a  certain  officer  of  Thrace,  who,  taking 
a  dislike  to  a  dog,  fired  a  stone  at  him.  He  missed  the 
object,  but  struck  his  mother-in-law.  [Laughter.]  "  It 
was  not  so  bad  a  shot,"  he  philosophically  exclaimed.  I 
leave  my  Brooklyn  friends  to  draw  the  moral. 

As  to  speaking  for  our  clients,  I  cannot  be  dictated  to  in 
that  fashion.  What  have  our  clients  done  for  us  to-night 
that  we  should  do  this  for  nothing  for  them?  If  there  be  a 
weak  spot  in  the  constitution  and  mental  organization  of 
Mr.  Silliman,  I  fancy  it  had  been  an  undue  yielding  to  the 
caprices  of  clients.  Let  us  be  braver  and  bolder  and 
stronger  than  he.  Let  them  get  all  they  are  entitled  to, 
and  very  little  of  that.  [Laughter.]  They  are  certainly  not 
entitled  to  be  admitted  to  our  secret  rites,  nor  to  pervade 
this  hall  and  its  atmosphere  with  their  uninvited  and 
gratuitous  presence. 

Much  has  been  said  to-night  to  show  that  our  profession 
of  to-day,  and  our  Bar,  are  equal  to  the  profession  and  the 
Bar  of  the  past.  But,  is  it  claiming  more  than  we  are 
entitled  to  if  we  insist  that  the  Bar  never  has  had  as  much 
honor,  as  much  talent,  as  much  industry,  considering  the 
vastly  increased  numbers  in  its  ranks  and  the  vastly  in- 
creased temptations  of  to-day?     It  is  idle  to  talk  of  a  great 


OUR    CLIFA'TS  285 

body  remaining  stationary  and  immovable.  The  Pyramids 
of  Egypt  may  do  that,  but  no  h'ving  organization  ever  will. 
We  are  improving  or  we  are  going  back.  It  was  a  bcauti- 
ful  thought  of  Pascal  that  the  human  race  was  like  a  child, 
always  growing,  but  never  growing  old.  So  of  every  large 
and  organized  body  of  learned  and  intelligent  men. 

And  so  especially  it  is  with  our  profession,  the  profession 
of  professions — if  we  do  not  keep  ahead  of  the  times  we  go 
back.  The  examples  that  we  have  in  these  older  men,  all 
stimulate  us  to  nobler  effort,  perhaps,  and  teach  after  all, 
that  in  the  record  of  an  upright  and  honorable  life,  there  is 
much  to  stimulate  even  the  baser  motives  of  self-interest. 
But  as  the  great  mass  of  our  people  are  being  instructed,  so 
should  we  rise  with  and  above  the  rest,  and  although  each 
one  of  us  will  not  deserve,  as  few  of  us  ever  can,  the  eulo- 
gies that  pour  from  our  hearts  through  our  lips  to-night  in 
the  presence  of  a  beloved  and  honored  brother,  each  man 
may  do  his  best  in  his  own  sphere  at  least,  so  that  some  of 
us  who  may  remain  behind  him  shall  not  be  unworthy  to 
stand  by  the  monument  that  shows  wdiere  he  rests,  and  say 
one  kindly  and  loving  word  for  him. 

I  am  exceeding  my  time,  but  no  one  will  follow  more 
sincerely  the  echo  of  what  was  said  to-night  of  Mr.  Silli- 
man.  I  am  not  prepared  like  Brother  Carter  to  recite,  in 
advance,  his  obituary  notice.  Far  distant  be  that  day  ! 
Many  of  us  will  fall  by  the  wayside  before  he  is  gathered 
to  his  fathers.  But  we  will  continue  to  honor  and  to  love 
him,  and  to  honor  and  love  those  younger  brethren  who 
grow  in  honor  by  our  side,  for  we  know  the  increased  and 
accumulated  weight  of  daily  temptations  that  press  upon 
their  shoulders.  For  him  I  can  only  say,  in  closing,  that  I 
know  that  I  am  giving  voice  to  what  you  all  feel — Deal 
with  him  gently,  gentle  Time.     [Great  applause.] 


SAMUEL  SULLIVAN   COX 


SMITH  AND  SO  FORTH 

[Impromptu  speech  of  Samuel  Sullivan  Cox,  at  the  120th  annual 
banquet  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York.  The 
banquet  was  given  in  New  York  Cit}^  November  20,  18S8.  Mr.  Cox, 
after  much  reluctance,  responded  to  the  call  for  an  address.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentle:\ien  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  : — I  have  no  particular  toast  to  speak  to,  but  in 
my  emergency,  I  may  select  a  subject  fruitful  to  many  a 
student,  and  especially  as  we  are  at  the  festive  climax  of  our 
entertainment.  In  looking  around  this  audience  I  feel  like 
generalizing,  and  in  a  nebulous  way,  therefore,  allow  me  to 
select  as  a  subject  that  of  Smith.  [Laughter.]  We  have 
two  representatives  of  the  family  here  to-night.*  Both  are 
near  to  me.  And,  if  you  will  look  in  the  New  York  Direc- 
tory, you  will  find  2,000  other  names,  members  of  the  same 
Smith  family.  As  a  politician,  not  unused,  "  on  the  occasion 
sudden,"  to  cultivating  the  graces,  I  will  never  utter  a  syl- 
lable against  the  Smith  family.  [Laughter.]  Why,  in  the 
early  days  of  Grecian  history,  they  were  demigods  and 
founders  of  states.  The  only  place  where  they  were  not  is 
recorded  in  Samuel— the  chapter  and  verse  I  will  not  recall, 
for  I  am  not  certain  about  them.  But  it  will  not  hurt  you 
to  search  for  the  verse  yourself  from  Genesis  to  Revelation. 
[Laughter.]  The  words  are :  "  There  was  no  Smith  in  all 
Israel."  [Loud  laughter.]  Whenever  the  children  of  Israel 
wanted  to  sharpen  their  spears,  or  polish  their  ploughshares 
or  cutlasses,  or  close  up  the  rivets  in  their  armor,  they  had  to 
go  down  to  Tyre  or  Sidon,  and  call  in  the  Smiths  of  that 
locality. 

*  Charles  S.  Smith,  President  of  Chamber;  Professor  Goldwin  Smith. 

286 


SMITH    AND    SO    I'ORTII  287 

The  Smiths  have  progressed  and  multiplied  ;  they  are 
everywhere,  including  Canada.  [Laughter.]  The  Registrar- 
General  of  Great  Britain  says,  that  in  Kngland  and  Wales 
there  are  three-quarters  of  a  million  of  Smiths.  Oh,  sir,  it  is 
a  great  family.  [Laughter.]  In  the  early  chronicles  of 
Norseland,  it  is  said,  the  Smiths  were  honored  by  being  ad- 
mitted to  the  royal  presence.  They  drank  mead  with  the 
king.  I  never  saw  a  Smith  in  my  life  that  would  ever  refuse 
to  take  a  drink.  [Roars  of  laughter,  in  which  President 
Smith  and  Professor  Goldwin  Smith  heartily  joined.]  It 
mattered  not  what  kind  of  liquor.  [Laughter.]  Why, 
when  the  Smith  family  predominated  in  every  country, 
liberty  also  triumphed  ["  Good  !  good  !  "] — commercial, 
personal  and  public  liberty.  [Cheers.]  The  age  of  iron  was 
the  age  of  the  Smith.  The  age  of  iron  has  always  ruled. 
It  means  to-day  speedy  locomotion  and  transportation. 
[Cheers.]  It  means  commerce,  with  its  chambers  of  in- 
fluence. Iron  does  not  mean  the  mere  furtherance  of  trade 
between  one  state  and  another — between  one  country  and 
another,  between  Canada  and  the  United  States — between 
Mexico  and  our  country.  It  means  the  largest  liberty  of 
interchange  between  all  the  chambers  of  political  power,  as 
well  as  the  chambers  of  commerce. 

I  dare  to  say  to  you,  to-night,  as  a  representative  of  New 
York  City,  not  altogether  in  the  minority — [Renewed  laugh- 
ter, which  drowned  the  remainder  of  the  sentence.]  I  believe 
my  friend,  Warner  Miller,  is  gone.  [Laughter.]  I  wanted 
to  sympathize  with  him.  [Cheers  and  laughter.]  For  I 
noticed  that  when  your  President  Smith  called  upon  our 
late  candidate  for  Governor  to  speak,  he  did  not  ask  you  to 
fill  your  glasses  to  the  Millers.  High  license  and  other 
sumptuary  laws  would  have  prevented  that.     [Laughter.] 

Nevertheless  my  party  is  in  one  sense  in  the  minority, 
along  with  the  Millers.  I  am  not  one  of  those  that  repine 
because  we  are  thus  situated.  It  has  its  compensations. 
For  one,  I  am  used  to  it.  [Laughter  and  cheers.]  I  have 
been  there  before.  [Renewed  merriment.]  I  am  about  the 
only  Democrat  here  this  evening  that  is  called  upon  to 
speak.  I  feel  lonesome  [laughter],  as  this  is  a  non  partisan 
association.  [Laughter.]  But  still,  out  of  my  solitude  I 
want  to  say  to  you,  gentlemen,  that,  in  this  great  whirling, 


288  SAMUEL   SULLIVAN    COX 

swilling  City  of  New  York,  our  party  still  has  a  majority  of 
one  hundred  thousand  to  back  up  its  commercial  interests, 
freedom  and  unity.  I  join  the  sagacious  and  eloquent 
gentleman  from  Canada  (Mr.  Smith),  who  has  addressed 
you  on  this  question  of  enlarged  interchange.  I  may  not 
live  to  see  the  time  when  the  Democratic  party  may  resume 
power.  [Laughter.]  I  am  getting  to  be  old  ["  No  !  No!"] 
— and  when  I  sat  here  this  evening,  and  heard  the  victors 
reviving  and  rejoicing  over  their  recent  victories,*  I  gathered 
some  consolation  from  the  verse  of  Virgil.  When  Dido 
asks  JEneas  to  recount  the  miseries  of  the  siege  of  Troy,  he 
responds  : 

"  O  Regina,jiibcs  renovare  infandiun  dolorem" 

Every  syllable  is  a  tear ;  but  there  is  a  prism  of  hope  in 
its  every  hue.  [Cheers  and  laughter.]  It  is  not  altogether 
a  dead  language.     It  is  not  Turkish,  either.     [Laughter.] 

When  my  friend,  Mr.  Miller,  talked  about  the  advantages 
of  this  magnificent  port,  and  its  early  history,  as  the  goal 
and  home  of  adventure  and  trade — when  he  spoke  about  the 
natural  advantages  we  enjoy,  which  your  enterprise  has  en- 
hanced in  a  marvellous  manner — my  heart  burned  within  my 
body,  as  if  some  divine  truth  had  inspired  him.  I  felt  that 
our  defeat  was  negative  success  ;  for  had  it  not  converted 
him  to  the  main  issue  of  the  recent  election  ?  I  felt  that 
our  triumph  may  be  such  a  victory  as  Wendell  Phillips 
called  a  minority  of  one  with  God  !  [Laughter.]  Wait  till 
the  time  rolls  round,  when,  perhaps,  there  are  bad  crops  here 
and  good  crops  abroad — and  the  stress  for  a  larger  education 
falls  upon  the  land — then  the  bucolic  element  will  rise  up 
and  recall  to  power  the  party  which  favors  agricultural  culti- 
vation and  commercial  freedom  between  the  nations. 

I  have  been  interested  in  hearing  all  the  gentlemen  who 
have  spoken  ;  and,  politics  aside,  I  am  proud  to  know  that 
since  our  elections  are  over — after  one  party  has  been  more 
or  less  in  the  ascendant — a  little  more  "  more  "  than  "  less  " 
[laughter] — that  under  our  institutions  and  liberalities,  we 
can  accept  the  result  in  a  manner  creditable  to  our  good 
feeling  and  our  best  interests.     Why  do  we  thus  acquiesce  ? 

*  The  Presidential  election  of  1888  when  Benjamin  Harrison  de- 
feated Grover  Cleveland. 


SMITH    AXl)   so    FORTH  3S9 

It  is  because  ^vc  have  a  constitutional  and  political  order, 
and  an  educational  discipline  in  this  country,  which  is  be- 
yond all  praise,  as  it  is  without  a  precedent  or  a  peer. 
The  Constitution,  with  its  refinement  of  theory  and  practice 
of  administration,  is  never  greater  than  when  its  majesty 
asserts  itself  through  popular  and  electoral  majorities. 
Greater  than  our  Washingtons,  Jeffersons  and  Madisons  ; 
greater  than  our  Jacksons,  Lincolns  and  Grants;  greater 
than  all  civic  and  military  personalities,  is  the  Constitution, 
which  gives  to  us  that  personal  liberty  and  religious  freedom, 
that  autonomy  of  Steite  and  unity  of  federation  ;  that  great 
and  glorious  aegis,  brighter,  more  resplendent  and  more  far- 
reaching  than  all  other  politics  which  have  come  through  all 
the  ages  of  mankind,  and,  we  hope,  more  enduring  than  any 
other  system  ever  devised  by  the  prudence  of  man. 

I  remember  once  when  I  resided  in  Turkey,  as  its  repre- 
sentative, to  have  seen  the  Sultan  coming  down  from  his 
star  palace  of  Yildiz,  at  the  season  of  Bairam,  to  visit  the 
mosque  in  Stamboul,  where  the  banner  of  the  prophet  was 
preserved.  Forty  thousand  soldiers  guarded  his  passage 
over  the  Golden  Horn,  and  a  hundred  thousand  of  the 
Faithful  welcomed  him  as  he  passed  by  on  his  sacred  mission. 
As  he  moved  on  toward  the  mosque  of  his  devotion,  to  kiss 
the  hallowed  ensign  of  his  religion,  I  heard  the  multitude 
salute  him  with  acclamations:  "Long  live  Abdul  Ahmed 
the  Second  !  Long  live  the  Padishah  of  the  Ottoman  ! 
Great  is  our  Sultan  !  Great  is  the  Caliph  of  Islam  !  But 
there  is  One — One  greater  than  he — Allah  il  Allah  !  Allah 
il  Allah  ! "  These  salutations  were  carried  along  the  route, 
with  an  ecstasy  that  proclaimed  at  once  the  loyalty  of  his 
subjects,  and  the  fidelity  of  the  devotees  of  an  unseen  God ! 

So  I  say  to  you,  that  although,  in  our  elections,  we  may 
have  designated  and  proclaimed  this  and  that  man  to  be  our 
chief  and  vice-magistrates — and  although  the  historic  Muse 
points  Vvith  significant  gesture  to  our  statesmen  and  heroes 
who  are  great — yet  there  is  something  greater  than  they  all, 
and  that  is,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  its 
representative  element  and  order.  Irrespective  of  parties 
and  their  vicissitudes,  it  stands  unassailable  and  splendid — 
amidst  all  the  passionate  forces  and  fiery  ordeals  by  which 
it  has  been  tried  by  a  benignant  Providence  !  [Applause.] 
19 


GEORGE   WILLIAM   CURTIS 


LIBERTY  UNDER  THE  LAW 

[speech  of  George  William  Curtis  at  the  seventy-first  anniversary 
banquet  of  the  New  England  Societ}-  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December 
22,  1876.  The  President  of  the  Society,  William  Borden,  presided. 
The  toast  to  which  Mr.  Curtis  responded  was,  "Forefathers'  Day — we 
best  celebrate  the  day  by  imitating  the  virtues  of  the  men  who  made  it 
glorious."  The  conclusion  of  this  speech  contains  one  of  the  earliest 
suggestions  of  the  eventual  solution  of  the  Tilden-Hayes  Presidential 
election  controversy  known  as  the  "  Electoral  Commission  law  of  1877."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  New  England 
Society: — It  was  Izaak  Walton  in  his  "Angler"  who  said 
that  Dr.  Botelier  was  accustomed  to  remark  "  that  doubtless 
God  might  have  made  a  better  berry  than  the  strawberry,  but 
doubtless  He  never  did."  And  I  suppose  I  speak  the  secret 
feeling  of  this  festive  company  when  I  say  that  doubtless 
there  might  have  been  a  better  place  to  be  born  in  than 
New  England,  but  doubtless  no  such  place  exists.  [Ap- 
plause and  laughter.]  And  if  any  skeptic  should  reply  that 
our  very  presence  here  would  seem  to  indicate  that  doubt- 
less, also.  New  England  is  as  good  a  place  to  leave  as  to 
stay  in  [laughter],  I  should  reply  to  him  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, our  presence  is  but  an  added  glory  of  our  mother.  It 
is  an  illustration  of  that  devout,  missionary  spirit,  of  the 
willingness  in  which  she  has  trained  us  to  share  with  others 
the  blessings  that  we  have  received,  and  to  circle  the  con- 
tinent, to  girdle  the  globe,  with  the  strength  of  New  Eng- 
land character  and  the  purity  of  New  England  principles. 
[Applause.]  Even  the  Knickerbockers,  Mr.  President — in 
whose  stately  and  splendid  city  we  are  at  this  moment  as- 
sembled, and  assembled  of  right  because  it  is  our  home — 
even  they  would  doubtless  concede  that  much  of  the  state 

290 


libp:rty  under  the  law  291 

and  splendor  of  this  city  is  due  to  the  enterprise,  the  in- 
dustry, and  the  genius  of  those  whom  their  first  historian 
describes  as  "  losel  Yankees."  [Laughter.]  Sir,  they  grace 
our  feast  with  their  presence ;  they  will  enliven  it,  I  am 
sure,  with  their  eloquence  and  wit.  Our  tables  are  rich  with 
the  flowers  grown  in  their  soil ;  but  there  is  one  flower  that 
we  do  not  see,  one  flower  whose  perfume  fills  a  continent, 
which  has  blossomed  for  more  than  two  centuries  and  a  half 
with  ever-increasing  and  deepening  beauty — a  flower  which 
blooms  at  this  moment,  on  this  wintry  night,  in  never-fad- 
ing freshness  in  a  million  of  true  hearts,  from  the  snow-clad 
Katahdin  to  the  warm  Golden  Gate  of  the  South  Sea,  and 
over  its  waters  to  the  isles  of  the  East  and  the  land  of 
Prester  John — the  flower  of  flowers,  the  Pilgrim's  "  May- 
flower."    [Applause.] 

Well,  sir,  holding  that  flower  in  my  hand  at  this  moment, 
I  say  that  the  day  we  celebrate  commemorates  the  introduc- 
tion upon  this  continent  of  the  master  principle  of  its  civi- 
lization. I  do  not  forget  that  we  are  a  nation  of  many  na- 
tionalities. I  do  not  forget  that  there  are  gentlemen  at  this 
board  who  wear  the  flower  of  other  nations  close  upon  their 
hearts.  I  remember  the  forget-me-nots  of  Germany,  and  I 
know  that  the  race  which  keeps  "  watch  upon  the  Rhine  " 
keeps  watch  also  upon  the  Mississippi  and  the  Lakes.  I 
recall — how  could  I  forget  ? — the  delicate  shamrock  ;  for 
there  "came  to  this  beach  a  poor  exile  of  Erin,"  and  on 
this  beach,  with  his  native  modesty,  "  he  still  sings  his 
bold  anthem  of  Erin  go  Bragh."  [Applause.]  I  remember 
surely,  sir,  the  lily — too  often  the  tiger-lily — of  France 
[laughter  and  applause]  and  the  thistle  of  Scotland  ;  I 
recall  the  daisy  and  the  rose  of  England ;  and,  sir,  in 
Switzerland,  high  upon  the  Alps,  on  the  very  edge  of  the 
glacier,  the  highest  flower  that  grows  in  Europe,  is  the 
rare  edehveiss.  It  is  in  Europe  ;  we  are  in  America.  And 
here  in  America,  higher  than  shamrock  or  thistle,  higher 
than  rose,  lily,  or  daisy,  higher  than  the  highest,  blooms  the 
perennial  Mayflower.  [Applause.]  For,  sir  and  gentlemen, 
it  is  the  English-speaking  race  that  has  moulded  the  destiny 
of  this  continent;  and  the  Puritan  influence  is  the  strongest 
influence  that  has  acted  upon  it.     [Applause.] 

I  am  surely  not  here  to  assert  that  the  men  who  have  re- 


292  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

presented  that  influence  have  always  been  men  whose  spirit 
was  blended  of  sweetness  and  light.  I  confess  truly  their 
hardness,  their  prejudice,  their  narrowness.  All  this  I  know: 
Charles  Stuart  could  bow  more  blandly,  could  dance  more 
gracefully  than  John  Milton  ;  and  the  cavalier  King  looks 
out  from  the  canvas  of  Vandyke  with  a  more  romantic 
beauty  of  flowing  love-locks  than  hung  upon  the  brows  of 
Edward  Winslow,  the  only  Pilgrim  father  whose  portrait 
comes  down  to  us.  [Applause.]  But,  sir,  we  estimate  the 
cause  beyond  the  man.  Not  even  is  the  gracious  spirit  of 
Christianity  itself  measured  by  its  confessors.  If  we  would 
see  the  actual  force,  the  creative  power  of  the  Pilgrim  prin- 
ciple, we  are  not  to  look  at  the  company  who  came  over  in 
the  cabin  of  the  "  Mayflower  "  ;  we  are  to  look  upon  the  forty 
millions  who  fill  this  continent  from  sea  to  sea.  [Applause.] 
The  "  Mayflower,  "  sir,  brought  seed  and  not  a  harvest.  In  a 
century  and  a  half,  the  religious  restrictions  of  the  Puritans 
had  grown  into  absolute  religious  liberty,  and  in  two  cen- 
turies it  had  burst  beyond  the  limits  of  New  England,  and 
John  Carver,  of  the  "  Mayflower,"  had  ripened  into  Abraham 
Lincoln,  of  the  Illinois  prairie.  [Great  and  prolonged  ap- 
plause.] 

Why,  gentlemen,  if  you  would  see  the  most  conclusive 
proof  of  the  power  of  this  principle,  you  have  but  to  ob- 
serve that  the  local  distinctive  title  of  New  Englanders  has 
now  become  that  of  every  man  in  the  country.  Every  man 
who  hears  me,  from  whatever  State  in  the  Union,  is,  to 
Europe,  a  Yankee,  and  to-day  the  United  States  are  but  the 
"Universal  Yankee  Nation."  [Applause.]  Do  you  ask  me, 
then,  what  is  this  Puritan  principle  ?  Do  you  ask  me 
whether  it  is  as  good  for  to-day  as  for  yesterday  ;  whether 
it  is  good  for  every  national  emergency  ;  whether  it  is  good 
for  the  situation  of  this  hour?  I  think  we  need  neither 
doubt  nor  fear.  The  Puritan  principle  in  its  essence  is  sim- 
ply individual  freedom.  From  that  spring  religious  liberty 
and  political  equality.  The  free  State,  the  free  Church,  the 
free  School — these  are  the  triple  armor  of  American  nation- 
ality, of  American  security.  [Applause.]  But  the  Pilgrims, 
while  they  have  stood  above  all  men  for  their  idea  of  liberty, 
have  always  asserted  liberty  under  law  and  never  separated 
it  from  law.     John  Robinson,  in  theletter  that  he  wrote  the 


LIBERTY    UNDER    THE    LAW  293 

Pilgrims  when  they  sailed,  said  these  words,  that  well,  sir, 
might  be  written  in  gold  around  the  cornice  of  that  future 
banqueting-hall  to  which  you  have  alluded:  "You  know 
that  the  image  of  the  Lord's  dignity  and  authority  which 
the  magistry  beareth  is  honorable  in  how  mean  person  so- 
ever." [Applause.]  This  is  the  Puritan  principle.  Those 
men  stood  for  liberty  under  the  law.  They  had  tossed  long 
upon  a  wintry  sea  ;  their  minds  were  full  of  images  derived 
from  their  voyage;  they  knew  that  the  will  of  the  people 
alone  is  but  a  gale  smiting  a  rudderless  and  saillcss  sliip,  and 
hurling  it  a  mass  of  wreck  upon  the  rocks.  But  the  will  of 
the  people,  subject  to  law,  is  the  same  gale  filling  the  trim 
canvas  of  a  ship  that  minds  the  helm,  bearing  it  over  yawn- 
ing and  awful  abysses  of  ocean  safely  to  port  [Loud  ap- 
plause.] 

Now,  gentlemen,  in  this  country  the  Puritan  principle  in 
its  development  has  advanced  to  this  point,  that  it  provides 
us  a  lawful  remedy  for  every  emergency  that  may  arise. 
[Cheers.]  I  stand  here  as  a  son  of  New  England.  In  every 
fibre  of  my  being  am  I  a  child  of  the  Pilgrims.  [Applause.] 
The  most  knightly  of  all  the  gentlemen  at  Elizabeth's  court 
said  to  the  young  poet,  when  he  would  write  an  immortal 
song,  "  Look  into  your  own  heart  and  write."  And  I,  sir 
and  brothers,  if,  looking  into  my  own  heart  at  this  moment, 
I  might  dare  to  think  that  what  I  find  written  there  is 
written  also  upon  the  heart  of  my  mother,  clad  in  her  snows 
at  home,  her  voice  in  this  hour  would  be  a  message  spoken 
from  the  land  of  the  Pilgrims  to  the  capital  of  this  nation — 
a  message  like  that  which  Patrick  Henry  sent  from  Virginia 
to  Massachusetts  when  he  heard  of  Concord  and  Lexington: 
•'  I  am  not  a  Virginian,  I  am  an  American."  [Great  applause.] 
And  so,  gentlemen,  at  this  hour,  we  are  not  Republicans, 
we  are  not  Democrats,  we  are  Americans.  [Tremendous  ap- 
plause.] 

The  voice  of  New  England,  I  believe,  going  to  the  capital, 
would  be  this,  that  neither  is  the  Republican  Senate  to  in- 
sist upon  its  exclusive  partisan  way,  nor  is  the  Democratic 
Mouse  to  insist  upon  its  exclusive  partisan  w^ay,  but  Senate 
and  House,  representing  the  American  people  and  the 
American  people  only,  in  the  light  of  the  Constitution  and 
by  the  authority  of  the  law,  arc  to  provide  a  way  over  which 


294  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

a  President,  be  he  Republican  or  be  he  Democrat,  shall  pass 
unchallenged  to  his  chair.  [Vociferous  applause,  the  com- 
pany rising  to  their  feet.]  Ah  !  gentlemen  [renewed  ap- 
plause]— think  not,  Mr.  President,  that  I  am  forgetting  the 
occasion  or  its  amenities.  [Cries  of  "  No,  no,"  and  "  Go  on."] 
I  am  remembering  the  Puritans  ;  I  am  remembering  Ply- 
mouth Rock,  and  the  virtues  that  made  it  illustrious.  But 
we,  gentlemen,  are  to  imitate  those  virtues,  as  our  toast 
says,  only  by  being  greater  than  the  men  who  stood  upon 
that  rock.  [Applause.]  As  this  gay  and  luxurious  banquet, 
to  their  scant  and  severe  fare,  so  must  our  virtues,  to  be 
worthy  of  them,  be  greater  and  richer  than  theirs.  And  as 
we  are  three  centuries  older,  so  should  we  be  three  centuries 
wiser  than  they.     [Applause.] 

Sons  of  the  Pilgrims,  you  are  not  to  level  forests,  you  are 
not  to  war  with  savage  men  and  savage  beasts,  you  are  not 
to  tame  a  continent,  nor  even  found  a  State.  Our  task  is 
nobler,  is  diviner.  Our  task,  sir,  is  to  reconcile  a  nation.  It 
is  to  curb  the  fury  of  party  spirit.  It  is  to  introduce  a  loftier 
and  manlier  tone  everywhere  into  our  political  life.  It  is 
to  educate  every  boy  and  every  girl,  and  then  leave  them 
perfectly  free  to  go  from  any  schoolhouse  to  any  church. 
[Cries  of  "  Good,"  and  cheers.]  Above  all,  sir,  it  is  to  pro- 
tect absolutely  the  equal  rights  of  the  poorest  and  the 
richest,  of  the  most  ignorant  and  the  most  intelligent  cit- 
izen, and  it  is  to  stand  forth,  brethren,  as  a  triple  wall  of 
brass,  around  our  native  land,  against  the  mad  blows  of 
violence  or  the  fatal  dry-rot  of  fraud.  [Loud  applause.] 
And  at  this  moment,  sir,  the  grave  and  august  shades  of  the 
forefathers  whom  we  invoke  bend  over  us  in  benediction  as 
they  call  us  to  this  sublime  task.  This,  brothers  and  friends, 
this  is  to  imitate  the  virtues  of  our  forefathers  ;  this  is  to 
make  our  day  as  glorious  as  theirs.  [Great  applause,  fol- 
lowed by  three  cheers  for  the  distinguished  speaker.] 


NOBLESSE   OBLIGE  295 


NOBLESSE  OBLIGE 

[Speech  of  George  William  Curtis  at  the  Harvard  Aluuiui  diuner  .-it 
Cambridtfe,  IVIass.,  June  29,  iSSi.  Mr.  Curtis  received  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  Harvard  Uuiversity  this  year.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — In  the  old  Italian 
story  the  nobleman  turns  out  of  the  hot  street  crowded 
with  eager  faces  into  the  coolness  and  silence  of  his 
palace.  As  he  looks  at  the  pictures  of  the  long  line 
of  ancestors  he  hears  a  voice, — or  is  it  his  own  heart 
beating? — which  says  to  him,  noblesse  oblige.  The  youngest 
scion  of  the  oldest  house  is  pledged  by  all  the  virtues  and 
honor  of  his  ancestry  to  a  life  not  unworthy  his  lineage. 
Mr.  President,  when  I  came  here  I  was  not  a  nobleman,  but 
to-day  I  have  been  ennobled.  The  youngest  doctor  of  the 
oldest  school,  I,  too,  say  with  the  Italian,  noblesse  oblige.  For 
your  favor  is  not  approval  only ;  it  is  admonition.  It  says 
not  alone,  "  Well  done,"  but  "  Come  up  higher."  I  am 
pledged  by  all  the  honorable  traditions  of  the  noble  family 
into  which  I  am  this  day  adopted  and  of  which  tliis  spacious 
and  stately  temple  is  the  memorial.  Christo  et  Ecclesice. 
That  is  your  motto.  And  yet,  as  I  look  around  this  hall 
upon  the  portraits  of  your  ancestry,  as  I  think  of  the  emi- 
nent men,  your  children ;  and  above  all  when  I  read  in 
yonder  corridor,  rank  upon  rank,  in  immortal  lines,  the 
names  of  the  heroic  youth,  Integer  vitce  scelerisque  ptiris, 
these  cold  stones  burn  and  glow  ;  and  as  I  think  of  our  great 
legend  "  Fair  play  for  all  men,"  imperishable  because  writ^ 
ten  in  their  hearts'  blood,  I  feel  that  to  your  motto  one 
word  might  well  be  added,  Christo  et  Ecclesice  et  Civitati, — 
To  Christ,  to  the  Church,  to  the  Commonwealth.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

A  complete  and  thorough  education,  Milton  tells  us,  is 
that  which  fits  a  man  for  the  performance  of  all  public  and 
private  duties  in  peace  and  in  war.  That,  sir,  is  the  praise 
of  this  college.  For  as  the  history  of  religious  liberty  in 
America  shows  what  Harvard  College  has  done  for  the 
Church,  not  less  do  the  annals  of  the  continent  attest  what 
it  has  done  for  the  State.  There  was  never  a  good  word  to 
be  spoken,  nor  a  strong  blow  to  be  struck,  nor  a  young  life 


296  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

to  be  sacrificed  for  political  or  civil  liberty,  that  Harvard 
College  in  the  person  of  her  children  was  not  there.  [Loud 
applause.]  That  is  the  lesson  which  I  read  in  your  pages 
to-day.  From  your  Samuel  Adams  in  Faneuil  Hall,  your 
James  Otis  in  the  courts  of  law,  your  Joseph  Warren  upon 
Bunker  Hill,  through  all  the  resplendent  succession  down  to 
your  Charles  Sumner  in  the  forum,  your  Reveres,  your 
Shaw,  and  the  shining  host  of  their  brethren  in  the  field, 
attest  the  glory  of  Harvard  in  the  persons   of  her  children. 

'■  The  applause  of  listening  senates  to  command, 

The  threats  of  pain  and  ruin  to  despise  ; 
To  scatter  plent}'  o'er  a  smiling  land 

And  read  their  history  in  a  nation's  eyes." 

And,  sir,  I  say  this  the  more  gladly  that  I  am  here  offi- 
cially, the  representative  of  another  university.  The  Uni- 
versity of  the  State  of  New  York  is  composed  of  all  the 
chartered  collegiate  institutions  of  that  great  commonwealth, 
and  as  a  regent  of  that  university  I  offer  the  right  hand  of 
fellowship  to  Harvard  College  of  all  the  colleges  of  the 
Empire  State.  [Applause.]  We  delight  to  believe,  gentle- 
men, in  the  State  of  New  York,  that  at  least  the  origin  of 
our  public  school  system  is  one  with  yours.  Religious  he- 
roism founded  New  England;  commercial  enterprise  settled 
New  York.  But  the  Pilgrims  brought  to  Plymouth  and 
the  Dutch  traders  brought  to  the  island  of  Manhattan  the 
schoolmaster,  the  birch — the  birch,  Mr.  Chairman,  which 
your  tingling  memory,  I  am  sure,  records  as  being  so  much 
better  in  its  bark  than  in  its  bite.  [Laughter.]  The  birch 
of  the  first  schoolmaster  on  the  shores  of  the  Hudson  was 
cut  from  the  same  tree  with  that  of  your  Master  Cheever 
and  your  Master  Moody  on  the  shores  of  Essex,  training 
Yankee  boj^s  for  Harvard  College.  [Laughter  and  ap- 
plause.] And  although,  sir,  with  the  magnanimity  of  New 
York,  Ave  freely  admit  that  twenty  years  before  there  was  a 
Latin  school  in  that  city  New  England  already  had  this  col- 
lege, and  although  as  late,  I  think,  as  1658,  the  nearest  place 
to  which  a  young  Dutchman  could  be  sent  for  training  in 
the  Latin  language  was  the  town  of  Boston  ;  yet  we  remem- 
ber, also,  that  if  New  York  lagged  a  little  in  her  Latin  she 
was  stoutly  the  defender  of  the    English   tongue  ;  and   it  is 


NODLESSK    OBLIGE  297 

among  our  proudest  traditions  in  that  State  that  New  York- 
first  maintained  the  freedom  of  the  English  press  upon  this 
continent  against  European  power.     [Applause.] 

And  yet,  sir,  to  make  my  story  quite  complete,  and  to  ad- 
here strictly  to  the  truth  of  history,  I  am  obliged  to  add 
that  the  royal  governor  bitterly  complained  that  those  who 
asserted  the  freedom  of  speech  in  New  York  were  tainted 
with  Boston  principles.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

Yet,  gentlemen,  I  assure  you  that  we  liave  our  extreme 
consolations.  Our  earliest  annals  in  the  State  of  New  York 
inform  us  that  one  sachem  of  the  five  nations  of  New  York 
was  in  the  habit  of  driving  a  whole  tribe  of  New  England 
Indians  before  him  [laughter]  ;  and  it  is  even  recorded, 
despite  the  observations  and  implications  of  his  excellency 
the  Governor,  that  one  New  York  sachem  had  been  known 
to  be  reverenced  throughout  Massachusetts  Bay.  [Laugh- 
ter.] I  am  afraid,  sir,  that  the  bay  has  lost  quite  all  its  rev- 
erence for  the  New  York  sachem  [loud  laughter]  ;  and  hap- 
pily for  us,  sir,  as  your  President  knows,  the  most  ferocious 
of  our  native  tribes  in  the  City  of  New  York,  the  tribe  of 
Tammany,  now  confines  itself  to  internecine  war.  [Laugh- 
ter.] And  yet,  when  I  look  upon  the  President  who  fills 
this  chair  to-day  ;  when  I  think  of  that  other  gentleman 
who  will  fill  the  chair  at  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  dinner  to-mor- 
row ;  when  I  look  here  and  there  upon  those  gorgeous  feath- 
ers and  that  war  paint  which  has  gathered  to  these  coun- 
cil fires  from  beyond  the  Connecticut,  I  cannot  but  feel 
that  the  New  York  braves  are  here  to-day  in  some  force. 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  And  when  I  recall  that  event  to 
which  our  President  has  alluded,  that  foray  of  the  New 
York  sachems  upon  the  New  England  tribe  known  as  the 
Overseers,  and  how  they  returned  to  their  city  dancing — 
if  you  will  permit  me  the  expression — jigs  of  joy  and 
brandishing  their  Harvard  club  in  triumph  [laughter],  I 
cannot  help  feeling  that  history  is  reproducing  itself,  and 
that  we  have  seen  the  New  York  sachems  in  most  civilized 
warfare,  not  wielding  the  scalping-knife,  but  simply  bran- 
dishing a  bellows  [laughter  and  applause],  and  blowing 
their  enemy  away.  [Applause.]  And  even  this  day,  sir, 
as  our  tribes  upon  the  shore  of  the  Hudson  look  across 
to  Massachusetts,  it  is  no  longer,  as  I  have  said,  with  the 


298  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

scalping-knife  in  their  hands  ;  but  they  shake  their  heads 
sorrowfully,  even  in  Tammany  hall,  and  as  they  see  you, 
they  repeat  unconsciously  the  sentiment  of  the  English 
statesman,  "  That  damned  morality  is  sure  to  be  the  ruin 
of  everytliing."     [Loud  laughter  and  applause.] 

When  the  first  deputation  came  from  the  new  Nether- 
lands to  the  new  Plymouth,  the  historian  tells  us  it  was  like 
the  meeting  of  friends  and  comrades.  We  are  assisting 
here  and  now  at  the  last  meeting  of  these  two  colonies,  and 
your  smiling  presence  attests  that  it  is  still  a  meeting  of 
friends  and  comrades.  If  our  Cornell  sometimes  modestly 
excels  with  the  oar  [laughter]  ;  if  our  Columbia,  not  in 
some  unknown  New  London  of  a  New  England,  but  in  the 
neighborhood  of  old  London,  in  old  England,  teaches  the 
crews  of  English  colleges  a  boating  skill  like  the  Thames 
upon  which  it  was  displayed — "  strong  without  rage,  without 
o'erflowing  full  ;  "  if  our  Knickerbocker  bat  and  ball  are 
sometimes  wreathed  with  the  laurels  of  friendly  victory  ; 
yet,  sir,  in  all  the  collegiate  institutions,  not  in  New  York 
alone,  but  throughout  the  country,  as  I  am  sure  the  gentle- 
man on  my  right,  President  Oilman,  will  attest,  there  is  no 
grudging  of  any  honorable  precedence  to  this  venerable 
mother,  the  Alma  Mater  of  colleges  as  well  as  the  nourish- 
ing parent  of  sound  learning  in  America.     [Applause.] 

And  here,  gentlemen,  if  anywhere  in  the  country,  and 
to-day  if  on  any  day  in  the  year,  is  proven  the  faith  of  one 
of  our  most  distinguished  sons,  spoken  forty  years  ago  on 
one  commencement  day,  "  Neither  years  nor  books  have 
availed  to  extirpate  the  prejudice  then  rooted  in  me  that 
the  scholar  is  the  favorite  of  heaven  and  earth,  the  excel- 
lency of  his  countr}',  the  prince  of  men."  His  own  life  has 
amply  vindicated  his  words.  Like  a  strain  of  commanding 
music,  it  has  won  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  gladly 
to  acknowledge  the  value,  the  dignity,  the  immort;il 
power  of  the  scholar,  in  Ralph  V  aldo  Emerson.  [Loud 
applause.]  Led  by  the  great  excxmples,  by  the  inspiring 
associations,  by  the  elevated  consecration  of  this  university, 
shall  not  every  commencement  day  send  us  forth  such  rein- 
vigorated  resolution  to  live  worthily  of  this  mother,  that 
every  man  we  meet,  even  the  New  York  sachem,  shall  wish 
they  were  sons  of  Harvard?     [Loud  applause.] 


GREETING   THE   AUTOCRAT  299 


GREETING  THE  AUTOCRAT 

[Speech  of  George  William  Curtis  at  a  banquet  given  by  members 
of  the  medical  profession  of  New  York  to  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  April 
12,  1883.  Dr.  Fordyce  Barker  presided.  This  speech  was  delivered  by 
Mr.  Curtis  iu  response  to  the  toast,  "  L,iterature."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gextlkmen  :— Medicine  has  spoken 
the  praises  of  our  guest ;  and  the  Church  and  the  Eaw.  And  as 
the  Church  disposes  satisfactorily  of  a  man's  mind,  and  Med- 
icine summarily  of  his  body,  and  Law  most  effectually  of  his 
estate,  what  remains  for  Literature  to  add  to  a  doctor's  sub- 
ject so  thoroughly  disposed  of,  but  that  in  Literature  he  has 
chosen  to  build  his  most  enduring  monument  ?  All  of  the 
faculties  have  claimed  him  and  have  spoken  his  praises. 
Each  in  turn  has  cried  :  "  Hail  !  thane  of  Glamis !  Hail ! 
thane  of  Cawdor  !  "  and  now  comes  Literature  with  :  "  All 
hail  !  thou  that  shalt  be  King  hereafter  !  "  And  what  time, 
tell  me,  gentlemen,  in  New  York,  can  be  so  fitting  as  this 
for  Literature  in  this  city  to  greet  this  brother  from  New 
England  ?     Longfellow  sang  in  one  of  his  earliest  poems  : 

"  Sweet  April,  many  hearts  are  wedded 
Unto  thee,  as  hearts  are  wed." 

But  to  this  particular  April  the  heart  of  this  whole  country 
is  wedded  by  a  proud  and  tender  memory,  for  it  is  the  cen- 
tenary month  of  the  birth  of  that  kindly  genius  of  whom  we 
may  truly  say  that  the  long  and  dreary  and  frozen  winter  of 
our  colonial  literature  was  made  glorious  summer  by  this 
son  of  York.  The  City  of  New  York,  gentlemen,  has  many 
sins  to  answer  for.  You  need  not  tremble.  I  am  not  about 
to  enumerate  them,  for  I  will  not  detain  this  company  until 
midsummer  :  but  surely  it  may  condone  many  offences  that 
the  City  of  New  York  was  the  birthplace  of  Washington 
Irving,  and  of  the  first  distinctive  American  literature.  Our 
literature  in  the  last  century  like  our  government  was  pro- 
vincial and  colonial.  It  did  not  declare  its  independence 
until  the  daring  humor  of  a  young  son  of  New  York  plucked 
the  venerable  traditions  of  New  Amsterdam  by  the  beard 
and  turned  the  history  of  his   native  city  into   an  immortal 


300  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

jest.  I  do  not  deny  that  the  force  of  Yankee  scholarship 
will  yet  show  that  Irving  was  a  Yankee.  My  friend,  Bishop 
Clark  [Thomas  M.  Clark,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  R.  I.],  has 
already  shown  us  the  clerical  descent  of  our  distinguished 
guest  and  has  ranked  him  among  the  theologians.  New 
England  is  quite  capable  of  this  process  of  ratiocination. 
Irx'ing's  father  was  a  Scotchman  ;  the  Scotch  were  Cov- 
enanters ;  the  Covenanters  were  Presbyterians  ;  the  Pres- 
b\'tcrians  v/ere  Puritans,  and  the  Puritans  in  their  various 
imniigrations  to  this  country  became  Yankees.  It  is  thus 
demonstrated  that  the  son  of  the  Scotchman  was  a  Yankee, 
somehow  astray  upon  the  Island  of  Manhattan.  And  this 
theory  will  be  shortly  supported  by  this  other  truth  that  the 
Pilgrims  whom  Rip  van  Winkle  saw  were  evidently  sons  of 
Holland,  and  they  had  brought  with  them  so  much  "  Hol- 
lands "  under  their  jackets  that  somehow  they  stumbled 
ashore  on  the  Catskill  Mountain  instead  of  on  Plymouth 
Rock. 

Nevertheless  we  must  admit  that  the  Muses  early  fright- 
ened by  the  Plutos  and  Mercury  who  marked  New  Am- 
sterdam for  their  own,  have  in  the  main  preferred  those  other 
banks  on  the  Charles  and  that  in  fact  upon  those  happy 
shores  they  have  planted  their  Holmes.  Yet  we  dwellers 
upon  the  banks  of  the  Hudson  have  this  consolation  :  that 
here  the  genius  of  our  literature  arose,  and  has  invested  our 
city  and  our  rivers  and  its  shores  with  imperishable  charms. 
As  long  as  the  story  of  the  Revolution  is  told,  "The  Spy" 
will  ride  his  rounds  in  the  neutral  ground  unchallenged  and 
secure.  As  long  as  the  Hudson  pours  through  the  stately 
gates  of  the  Highlands  to  the  sea  : — 

"  The  middle  watch  of  the  summer's  night, 
When  the  earth  is  dark,  and  the  heavens  are  bright," 

will  be  given  to  the  "  Culprit  Fay  ".  So  long  as  the  thunder 
rolls  in  the  western  sky,  the  traveller  upon  our  enchanted 
stream  in  the  shadow  of  the  Catskill  will  hear  the  mighty 
Mountain  King  whom  Rip  van  Winkle  saw.  And  if  any  of 
you,  gentlemen,  happily  neighbors  of  this  city  shall  endeavor 
to  thread  your  way  home  to-night  through  Westchester,  in 
the  fitful  gusts  of  the  midnight  breeze,  you  will  hear  the 
headlong  flight  of  Ichabod  Crane ;  and  in  the  gleamings  of 


GREETING  THE  AUTOCRAT  30I 

the  struggling  moon,  you  will  see  the  Headless  Horseman 
of  Sleepy  Hollow.  Then,  how  naturally  the  genius  that  has 
given  us  all  these  figures  that  has  peopled  for  us  our  own 
realm,  welcomes  this  kindred  genius  from  beyond  the  Con- 
necticut. Diederich  Knickerbocker  with  both  hands  out- 
stretched folds  to  his  heart  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast 
Table,  and  confesses  that  if  the  old  Yankee  could  not  take 
his  fort  of  New  Amsterdam,  the  younger  Yankee  has  cap- 
tured the  heart  of  New  York.     [Applause.] 

And  Leatherstocking,  leaning  upon  his  rifle,  muses  that 
the  wilderness  and  Pocahontas  were  a  less  happy  home  even 
for  him  than  Boston  and  Dorothea  Pugh.  The  Dutchman's 
fireside  glows  and  burns  with  hope  and  expectation  at  the 
coming  of  the  guardian  angel.  Marco  Bozzaris  flings  aside 
his  guarded  tent  at  midnight  to  hear  from  Bunker  Hill  the 
tremendous  summons  :  "  Choose  you  this  day  whom  you 
will  serve."  The  Stout  Gentleman  nods  to  the  Deacon,  in 
the  "  One  Hoss  Shay  "  ;  "  the  flood  of  years  "  as  it  nears  the 
main  pauses  in  its  majestic  flight  to  hear  with  joy  the  celes- 
tial music  of  the  "  Chambered  Nautilus  "  and  Dr.  Drake,  of 
New  York,  sounding  his  immortal  lyric  : — 

"  Forever  float  that  standard  sheet. 

Where  breathes  the  foe  but  falls  before  us, 
With  Freedom's  soil  beneath  our  feet, 
And  Freedom's  banner  floating  o'er  us." 

finds  his  music  mingled  with  that  of  Dr.  Holmes  in  his  lyric 
which  shoots  out  like  a  rattling  broadside  from  his  own 
"  Ironsides"  : — 

"  Nail  to  the  mast  our  holy  flag, 
Set  every  threadbare  sail, 
And  give  her  to  the  god  of  storms, 
The  lightning,  and  the  gale." 

Ah !  gentlemen,  you  who  are  doctors, — well  have  these  two 
doctors  arrayed  themselves  in  the  glory  of  our  flag,  each 
urging  the  other  with  the  glittering  stripes  of  emulation  and 
a  grateful  country  crowning  both  with  the  inextinguishable 
stars  of  national  renown.     [Applause.] 

The  bishop  told  us  and  I  think  every  orator  thus  far  has 
told  us  that  the  earliest  constellation  in  our  literary  firma- 
ment might  have  arisen  a  little  south  of  New  England  ;  and 


302  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

yet  there  was  no  delay  after  the  full  splendor  of  Ursa  Major 
filled  the  Northern  heavens.  To  the  great  literary  group  of 
New  York — Irving,  Cooper,  Bryant  (if  the  city  of  his  res- 
idence may  claim  his  fame),  Halleck,  Drake,  Verplanck  and 
Paulding — has  succeeded  a  circle  in  Boston,  of  a  genius  so 
various  in  accomplishments  and  achievement,  that  like  the 
Round  Table  of  King  Arthur — it  was  an  image  of  the  mighty 
world.  Poets,  romancers,  historians,  philosophers,  essayists 
— masters  in  every  art,  and  in  every  science  were  blended 
there  into  goodliest  literary  fellowship  whereof  our  Western 
world  has  record.  Happier  possibly  than  some  of  you, 
gentlemen,  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  sit  sometimes  at  their 
feasts — feasts  for  which  glowing  John  Dryden  would  have 
hurried  from  Will's,  and  Addison  and  Sterne,  Johnson  and 
Burke  would  have  hastened  from  literary  society,  and  Sidney 
Smith  and  Jeffrey  would  have  stolen  from  the  "  Edinburgh 
Review  "  and  earlier,  farther  and  first  of  all,  Shakespeare 
and  Bacon  would  have  come  fraternally  from  the  "  Mermaid  " 
to  see  that,  in  the  literature  of  our  Western  world,  "  night's 
candles  are  burned  out,  and  jocund  day  stands  tip-toe  on 
the  misty  mountain-top." 

Gentlemen,  one  of  the  knights  at  that  table  sits  this  eve- 
ning at  ours.  He  has  shown  us  again  and  again  the  sweet 
kindred  of  tears  and  laughter.  His  frolicking  fancy,  his 
tender  sympathy,  his  sparkling  thought,  his  flashing  wit,  had 
shone  upon  and  illuminated  his  own  time  as  they  charm  and 
brighten  ours.  Had  I  magic  finer  than  that  of  yours  I  could 
reveal  to  you  at  this  moment,  doubtless,  those  who  are  sit- 
ting by  this  doubly-laurelled  guest.  Your  art,  Mr.  Chair- 
man, your  art,  gentlemen,  and  that  for  which  I  speak  may 
well  confess  his  renown.  But  mark  his  own  impartiality : 
while  he  professes  medicine,  he  practises  literature  ;  while  he 
cools  the  fever  that  wastes  the  body,  he  kindles  the  fires 
that  ennoble  the  soul ;  and  soothing  mortal  pains  with  cun- 
ning anodyne,  he  has  distilled  immortal  joy  from  the  divine 
nepenthe  of  song.  By  that  finer  magic,  could  I  at  this 
witching  hour  but  touch  your  eyes  for  a  moment,  shortly  we 
should  see  by  his  side  the  great  Sydney  taking  one  hand,  and 
the  other  should  rest,  not  in  that  of  Rabelais, — no;  but  in 
those  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  of  Dr.  Oliver  Goldsmith  ; 
and  that  younger  Brown  of  Edinburgh,  to  whom  my  friend 


THE    Ki\C.LIsn-SFEAKIX(;    RACK  303 

referred,  would  gladly  own  him  as  a  brother,  while  his  airy 
fancy  and  penetrating  pathos  would  breathe  softly  in  the 
ears  of  our  poet,  "  My  master,  my  master."  Well,  sir,  I 
respect  his  modesty;  I  shall  not  mention  his  name.  Men- 
tion it?  Why  not?  He  has  written  it  indelibly  on  the 
literature  of  his  country  and  upon  the  hearts  of  his  country- 
men."    [Applause.] 


THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  RACE 

[Speech  of  George  William  Curtis  at  the  119th  annual  banquet  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York,  November  15,  1S87. 
Charles  Stewart  Smith,  the  President  of  the  Chamber,  proposed  the  fol- 
lowing toast :  "  The  English-speaking  Race.  The  founders  of  common- 
wealths ;  pioneers  of  progress  ;  stubborn  defenders  of  liberty  ;  maj'  they 
ever  work  together  for  the  world's  welfare."  Joseph  Chamberlain,  to 
whom  Mr.  Curtis  refers,  was  the  guest  of  the  evening.] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  of  the  CiiAMr.ER  of 
Commerce  : — I  rise  with  some  trepidation  to  respond  to  this 
toast,  because  we  have  been  assured  upon  high  authority, 
although  after  what  we  have  heard  this  evening  w^e  cannot 
believe  it,  that  the  English-speaking  race  speaks  altogether 
too  much.  Our  eloquent  Minister  in  England  recently  con- 
gratulated the  Mechanics'  Institute  at  Nottingham  that  it 
had  abolished  its  debating  club,  and  said  that  he  gladly 
anticipated  the  establishment  in  all  great  institutions  of 
education  of  a  professorship  of  Silence.  I  confess  that  the 
proposal  never  seemed  to  me  so  timely  and  wise  as  at  this 
moment.  If  I  had  only  taken  a  high  degree  in  silence,  Mr. 
Chairman,  how  cordially  you  would  congratulate  me  and 
this  cheerful  company  !     [Laughter.] 

When  Mr.  Phelps  proceeded  to  say  that  Americans  are 
not  allowed  to  talk  all  the  time,  and  that  our  orators  are 
turned  loose  upon  the  public  only  once  in  four  years,  I  was 
lost  in  admiration  of  the  boundless  sweep  of  his  imagination. 
But  when  he  said  that  the  result  of  this  quadrennial  outburst 
was  to  make  the  country  grateful  that  it  did  not  come  of- 
tener,  I  saw  that  his  case  required  heroic  treatment,  and 
must  be  turned  over  to  Dr.  Depew.     [Laughter.] 

I  am  sure,  at  least,  that  when   our  distinguished  friends 


304  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

from  England  return  to  their  native  land  they  will  hasten  to 
besiege  His  Excellency  to  tell  them  where  the  Americans 
are  kept  who  speak  only  once  in  four  years.  And  if  they 
will  but  remain  through  the  winter,  they  will  discover  that 
if  our  orators  are  turned  loose  upon  the  public  only  once  in 
four  years,  they  are  turned  loose  in  private  all  the  rest  of  the 
time  ;  and  if  the  experience  and  observation  of  our  guests 
are  as  fortunate  as  mine,  they  will  learn  that  there  are  certain 
orators  of  both  branches  of  the  English-speaking  race — not 
one  hundred  miles  from  me  at  this  moment — whom  the 
public  would  gladly  hear,  if  they  were  turned  loose  upon  it 
every  four  hours.      [Cheers.] 

Wendell  Phillips  used  to  say  that  as  soon  as  a  Yankee 
baby  could  sit  up  in  his  cradle,  he  called  the  nursery  to 
order  and  proceeded  to  address  the  house.  If  this  Parlia- 
mentary instinct  is  irrepressible,  if  all  the  year  round  we  are 
listening  to  orations,  speeches,  lectures,  sermons,  and  the 
incessant,  if  not  always  soothing,  oratory  of  the  press,  to 
which  His  Honor  the  Mayor  is  understood  to  be  a  closely- 
attentive  listener,  we  have  at  least  the  consolation  of  know- 
ing that  the  talking  countries  are  the  free  countries,  and  that 
the  English-speaking  races  are  the  invincible  legions  of 
liberty.      [Applause.! 

The  sentiment  which  you  have  read,  Mr.  Chairman,  de- 
scribes in  a  few  comprehensive  words  the  historic  character- 
istics of  the  English-speaking  race.  That  it  is  the  founder 
of  commonwealths,  let  the  miracle  of  empire  which  we  have 
wrought  upon  the  Western  Continent  attest : — its  advance 
from  the  seaboard  with  the  rifle  and  the  axe,  the  plough  and 
the  shuttle,  the  teapot  and  the  Bible,  the  rocking-chair  and 
the  spelling-book,  the  bath-tub  and  a  free  constitution, 
sweeping  across  the  Alleghanies,  overspreading  the  prairies 
and  pushing  on  until  the  dash  of  the  Atlantic  in  their  ears 
dies  in  the  murmur  of  the  Pacific  ;  and  as  the  wonderful 
Goddess  of  the  old  mythology  touched  earth,  flowers  and 
fruits  answered  her  footfall,  so  in  the  long  trail  of  this  ad- 
vancing race,  it  has 'left  clusters  of  happy  States,  teeming 
with  a  population,  man  by  man,  more  intelligent  and  pros- 
perous than  ever  before  the  sun  shone  upon,  and  each 
remoter  camp  of  that  triumphal  march  is  but  a  further  out- 
post of  English-speaking  civilization.      [Applause.] 


THE    ENGLISH -SPEAKING    RACE  305 

That  it  is  the  pioneer  of  progress,  is  written  all  over  the 
globe  to  the  utmost  islands  of  the  sea,  and  upon  every  page 
of  the  history  of  civil  and  religious  and  commercial  freedom. 
[Cheers.]  Every  factory  that  hums  with  marvellous  machi- 
nery, every  railway  and  steamer,  every  telegraph  and  tel- 
ephone, the  changed  systems  of  agriculture,  the  endless  and 
universal  throb  and  heat  of  magical  invention,  are,  in  their 
larger  part,  but  the  expression  of  the  genius  of  the  race  that 
with  Watts  drew  from  the  airiest  vapor  the  mightiest  of 
motive  powers;  with  Franklin  leashed  the  lightning,  and 
with  Morse  outfablcd  fairy  lore.  The  race  that  extorted 
from  kings  the  charter  of  its  political  rights  has  won,  from 
the  princes  and  powers  of  the  air,  the  earth  and  the  water, 
the  secret  of  supreme  dominion,  the  illimitable  franchise  of 
beneficent  material  progress.     [Applause.] 

That  it  is  the  stubborn  defender  of  liberty,  let  our  own 
annals  answer,  for  America  sprang  from  the  defence  of  Eng- 
lish liberty  in  English  colonies,  by  men  of  English  blood, 
who  still  proudly  speak  the  English  language,  cherish 
English  traditions,  and  share  of  right,  and  as  their  own,  the 
ancient  glory  of  England.     [Applause.] 

No  English-speaking  people  could,  if  it  would,  escape  its 
distinctive  name,  and,  since  Greece  and  Judea,  no  name  has 
the  same  worth  and  honor  among  men.  We  Americans  may 
flout  England  a  hundred  times.  We  may  oppose  her 
opinions  with  reason,  we  may  think  her  views  unsound,  her 
policy  unwise  ;  but  from  what  country  would  the  most  Amer- 
ican of  Americans  prefer  to  have  derived  the  characteristic 
impulse  of  American  development  and  civilization  rather 
than  England?  What  language  would  we  rather  speak  than 
the  tongue  of  Shakespeare  and  Hampden,  of  the  Pilgrims 
and  King  James's  version?  What  yachts,  as  a  tribute  to 
ourselves  upon  their  own  element,  would  we  rather  outsail 
than  English  yachts  ?  [Laughter.]  In  what  national  life, 
modes  of  thought,  standards  and  estimates  of  character  and 
achievement  do  we  find  our  own  so  perfectly  reflected  as  in 
the  English  House  of  Commons,  in  English  counting-rooms 
and  workshops,  and  in  English  homes  ?     [Applause.] 

No  doubt  the  original  stock  has  been  essentially  modified 
in  the  younger  branch.  The  American,  as  he  looks  across 
the  sea,  to  what  Hawthorne  happily  called  "  Our  old  home," 


306  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

and  contemplates  himself,  is  disposed  to  murmur  :  "  Out  of 
the  eater  shall  come  forth  meat,  and  out  of  the  strength  shall 
come  forth  sweetness."  He  left  England  a  Puritan  icono- 
clast;  he  has  developed  in  Church  and  State  into  a  constitu- 
tional reformer.  He  came  hither  a  knotted  club  ;  he  has 
been  transformed  into  a  Damascus  blade.  He  seized  and 
tamed  a  continent  with  a  hand  of  iron  ;  he  civilizes  and  con- 
trols it  with  a  touch  of  velvet.  No  music  is  so  sweet  to  his 
car  as  the  sound  of  the  common-school  bell ;  no  principle  so 
dear  to  his  heart  as  the  equal  rights  of  all  men  ;  no  vision  so 
entrancing  to  his  hope  as  those  rights  universally  secured. 
[Applause. J 

This  is  the  Yankee  ;  this  is  the  younger  branch  ;  but  a 
branch  of  no  base  or  brittle  fibre,  but  of  the  tough  old  English 
oak,  which  has  weathered  triumphantly  the  tempest  of  a 
thousand  years.  It  is  a  noble  contention  whether  the 
younger  or  the  elder  branch  has  further  advanced  the  fron- 
tiers of  liberty,  but  it  is  unquestionable  that  liberty,  as  we 
understand  it  on  both  sides  of  the  sea,  is  an  English  tradition  ; 
we  inherit  it,  we  possess  it,  we  transmit  it,  under  forms  pe- 
culiar to  the  English  race.  It  is,  as  Mr.  Chamberlain  has  said, 
liberty  under  law.  It  is  liberty,  not  license  ;  civilization,  not 
barbarism  ;  it  is  liberty  clad  in  the  celestial  robe  of  law, 
because  law  is  the  only  authoritative  expression  of  the  will 
of  the  people,  representative  government,  trial  by  jury, 
habeas  corpus,  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press — why,  Mr. 
Chairman,  they  are  the  family  heirlooms,  the  family  dia- 
monds, and  they  go  wherever  in  the  wide  world  go  the  family 
name  and  language  and  tradition.     [Applause.] 

Sir,  with  all  my  heart,  and,  I  am  sure,  with  the  hearty  as- 
sent of  this  great  and  representative  company,  I  respond  to 
the  final  aspiration  of  your  toast :  "  May  this  great  family 
in  all  its  branches  ever  work  together  for  the  world's  wel- 
fare." Certainly  its  division  and  alienation  would  be  the 
world's  misfortune.  That  England  and  America  have  had 
sharp  and  angry  quarrels,  is  undeniable.  Party  spirit  in  this 
countr}^,  recalling  old  animosity,  has  always  stigmatized  with 
the  English  name  whatever  it  opposed.  Every  difference, 
every  misunderstanding  with  England  has  been  ignobly 
turned  to  party  account ;  but  the  two  great  branches  of  this 
common  race  have  come  of  age,  and  wherever  they  may  en- 


COMMERCE   AND    LITERATURE  307 

counter  a  serious  difficulty  whicii  must  be  accommodated 
tliey  have  but  to  thrust  demagogues  aside,  to  recall  the 
sublime  words  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  "  With  malice  toward 
none,  with  charity  for  all,"  and  in  that  spirit,  and  in  the  spirit 
and  the  emotion  represented  in  this  country  by  the  gentlemen 
upon  my  right  and  my  left,  I  make  bold  to  say  to  Mr,  Cham- 
berlain in  your  name,  there  can  be  no  misunderstanding 
which  may  not  be  honorably  and  happily  adjusted.  [Cheers.] 
For  to  our  race,  gentlemen  of  both  countries,  is  committed 
not  only  the  defence  but  the  illustration  of  constitutional 
liberty. 

The  question  is  not  what  we  did  a  century  ago,  or  in  the 
beginning  of  this  century,  with  the  lights  that  shone  around 
us,  but  what  is  our  duty  to-day,  in  the  light  which  is  given 
to  us  of  popular  government  under  the  republican  form  in 
this  country,  and  the  parliamentary  form  in  England. 

If  a  sensitive  public  conscience,  if  general  intelligence, 
should  not  fail  to  secure  us  from  unnatural  conflict,  then 
liberty  will  not  be  justified  of  her  children,  and  the  glory  of 
the  English-speaking  race  will  decline.  I  do  not  believe  it. 
I  believe  that  it  is  constantly  increasing,  and  that  the  colossal 
power  which  slumbers  in  the  arms  of  a  kindred  people  will 
henceforth  be  invoked,  not  to  drive  them  further  asunder, 
but  to  weld  them  more  indissolubly  together  in  the  defence  of 
liberty  under  law.      [Prolonged  applause.] 


COMMERCE  AND  LITERATURE 

[Speech  of  George  William  Curtis  at  the  i22d  annual  banquet  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York,  November  18,  1S90. 
Charles  Stewart  Smith,  the  President,  in  introducing  Mr.  Curtis,  said  : 
"  Gentlemen,  we  have  been  so  often  placed  under  such  obligations  to  our 
friend,  Mr.  Curtis,  for  his  elegant  and  scholarly  addresses  from  this  plat- 
form that  no  introduction  is  needed  from  me.  I  have  always  felt  that  an 
occasion  of  this  kind  is  not  full  rounded  and  complete  without  the  voice 
of  George  William  Curtis.  To  Mr.  Curtis,  who  will  now  address  you,  has 
been  assigned  the  subject,  '  Commerce  and  Literature.'  "] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  : — I  belong  to  the  class  of  Americans  which  was 
graphically  described  by  an  eminent  statesman  as  blanked 
**  littery  fellers."  I  suppose  that  class  is  the  human  litter  and 


308  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

refuse  that  remains  over  after  Pennsylvania  statesmen  are 
finished,     [Laughter.] 

But  I  am  very  happy  to  be  the  guest,  this  evening,  of  that 
other  great  class  to  which  you  belong,  the  equally  blanked 
"  commercial  fellers."  From  the  days  of  the  oldest  tra- 
ditions we  have  been  associated.  Your  tutelary  genius,  I  be- 
lieve, is  Mercury  ;  and  Apollo  is  ours.  If  you  are  satisfied, 
we  are.  [Laughter.]  To  be  sure,  your  god  outwitted  ours 
and  stole  his  oxen,  but  he  left  his  horses  of  the  sun,  and  I 
have  observed  that  it  is  with  those  that  Apollo  generally 
prefers  to  travel.  His  children  avenged  their  parent  by 
giving  your  deity  a  bad  name.  But  you  in  turn  have  been 
avenged  by  time  and  tradition.  P'or  if  Mercury  is  the  god 
of  the  thief,  it  is  universally  agreed  that  Apollo  is  the  god 
of  the  lyre.     [Laughter.] 

Undoubtedly  also  we  constantly  invade  each  other's  do- 
main [laughter]  ;  for  if  the  poet's  statements  in  writing  are 
works  of  imagination,  the  merchant's  statements  in  driving 
a  bargain  are  often  alleged  to  be  of  the  same  kind.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  "  littery  fellers  "  venture  into  your  realm; 
for  if  the  god  of  trade  was  the  messenger  of  the  gods,  and 
the  merchants,  his  children,  have  always  been  the  messen- 
gers of  civilization,  not  less  are  the  children  of  Apollo,  from 
Homer  to  Shakespeare,  and  from  Milton  and  Burns  to 
Bryant  and  Longfellow,  the  winged  and  swift-footed  bearers 
of  a  celestial  and  civilizing  message  to  men. 

Commerce  and  literature  have  been  always  mutually  help- 
ful. Indeed,  when  tradition  says  that  Apollo  gave  Mercury 
the  caduceus — you  remember  the  caduceus,  gentlemen — 
it  was  the  winged  rod  twined  with  serpents — it  was  merely 
the  mythological  way  of  saying  that  Literature,  the  perma- 
nent record  of  civilization  and  of  human  achievement,  gave 
to  Commerce  its  fundamental  principles  of  prudence, 
promptness  and  persistence,  and  taught  the  merchants  to 
bring  the  ends  of  the  earth  together  and  bind  them  fast  in 
peace  by  a  common  prosperity.  In  both  its  forms  of  his- 
tory and  philosophy.  Literature  demonstrates  that  reciproc- 
ity is  the  law  of  ever-widening  civilization,  and  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  poet's  vision  of  "  the  parliament  of  man,  the 
federation  of  the  world." 

If  commerce  has  done  great  deeds,  literature  has   made 


CUMMERCK   AND    LITKRATURK  309 

them  famous.  It  is  to  literature  that  we  owe  our  knowledge 
of  the  first  commercial  voyage.  At  least,  I  sup[)ose  it  was 
a  commercial  voyage,  because  it  was  an  expedition  for  wool. 
I  mean  the  voyage  of  the  Argonauts  for  the  Golden  Fleece  ; 
and,  considering  the  definite  purpose,  the  unquailing courage 
and  the  triumphant  success  of  that  expedition,  it  is  curious 
that  aimless  maunderings,  and  absence  of  mind,  should  be 
called  wool-gathering.  The  question  of  wool  has  played  a 
large  part  in  the  recent  political  debate,  [Laughter.]  If 
wool  has  not  been  pulled  over  anybody's  eyes,  it  has  cer- 
tainly been  stuffed  into  everybody's  ears  by  the  eloquent 
campaign  orators.  They  have  earnestly  besought  the  coun- 
try to  do  its  duty  by  wool  [laughter]  ;  but  they  could 
not  agree  what  the  duty  should  be.  None  of  them,  so  far 
as  I  know,  have  even  mentioned  the  highest  duty  upon 
wool  ever  paid.  It  Avas  paid  upon  that  importation  of  a 
single  golden  fleece,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  and  it  consisted 
of  taming  wild  bulls  that  snorted  fire,  killing  enchanted 
dragons,  escaping  Scylla  and  Charybdis,  and  overcoming 
every  kind  of  magical  horror  and  hostility.  It  was  the 
highest  tariff  ever  paid  upon  wool.  Yet  such  were  the 
energy  and  resources  of  the  wool-gatherers,  that  even  that 
terrific  duty  was  not  prohibitory. 

A  distinguished  Senator  of  the  United  States  was  lately 
reported  to  have  said  that,  under  certain  circumstances,  he 
would  gladly  see  commerce  annihilated.  The  Senator  is  a 
man  of  literary  tastes,  and  some  recent  events  may  have 
recalled  to  him  that  ancient  legend,  and  suggested  to  him 
that,  however  appalling  the  duty,  American  commerce  will 
refuse  to  be  annihilated.  [Applause.]  And  why?  Because 
if  there  be  no  magical  way  to  pay  the  duty,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  old  Greeks,  there  is  in  his  fellow-Americans  a  common- 
sense  way  of  reasonably  revising  and  adjusting  duties, 
which,  in  the  language  of  mythology,  is  merely  taming  the 
fire-breathing  bulls  and  slaying  the  devastating  dragons. 

A  happy  illustration  of  the  association  between  commerce 
and  literature  is  found  in  the  City  of  New  York.  In  the 
commercial  capital  of  the  continent  our  distinctive  Ameri- 
can literature  began,  and  the  first  American  book,  which 
was  accepted  and  approved  by  the  world,  was  the  work  of 
a  young  American  merchant.     To  be  sure,  he  failed   as  a 


310  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

merchant.  But  what  an  encouragement  in  the  counting 
room  to  know  that  if  you  cannot  be  a  fortunate  merchant 
vou  may  be  a  famous  author  !  That  if  you  cannot  be  a 
Cruger,  or  a  Walton  or  a  Franklin  of  the  older  day,  or  a 
Minturn  or  a  Marshall  of  a  later  day,  you  may  be  a  Wash- 
ington Irving ! 

Our  sombre  colonial  writing  was  all  sermon.  It  was  not 
until  1809  that  Mr.  Buckminster,  the  orator  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  at  Harvard,  said  that  the  genius  of  our  letters  began 
to  show  signs  of  greater  vigor  ;  and  in  the  same  year  a 
young  man,  who,  as  a  boy,  to  escape  the  rigors  of  domestic 
religious  discipline,  used  to  drop  out  of  the  window  of  his 
father's  house  in  William  Street  in  the  evening,  and  steal 
off  to  the  play  around  the  corner  in  John  Street,  published 
a  book  called  "  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York  ;  " 
and  in  the  gay  genius  of  Irving,  American  literature  es- 
caped the  sermon  and  came  laughing  into  life.  The  winter 
of  our  long  literary  discontent  was  made  glorious  summer 
by  this  son  of  York.  But  it  was  not  until  ten  years  later, 
when  he  was  an  unsuccessful  merchant,  and  Sydney  Smith 
asked  his  famous  question  :  "  Who  reads  an  American 
book?"  that  Irving  had  just  answered  it  by  the  first  num- 
bers of  the  "Sketch  Book,"  and  John  Bull  was  the  first  to 
own  that  Jonathan  had  described  traditional  and  charming 
aspects  of  his  own  life  and  character  with  more  delicate  grace 
than  any  Englishman  of  the  time. 

What  a  sweet  and  blameless  genius  it  was  !  It  aroused 
no  passion,  no  prejudice,  no  hostility.  Irving  was  popu- 
larl)'  beloved,  like  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  I  recall  the  amusing 
enthusiasm  with  which  a  party  of  Germans  in  Berlin,  upon 
discovering  that  I  was  an  American,  exclaimed  :  "  Ah,  we 
know  full  well  your  great  general,  Washington  Irving!" 
[Laughter.]  He  touched  ourhistoric  river  with  the  glamour 
of  the  imagination.  He  invested  it  with  the  subtle  and  en- 
during charm  of  literary  association.  He  peopled  it  with 
figures  that  make  it  dear  to  the  whole  world,  like  Scott's 
Tweed  or  Burns's  Bonny  Doon.  The  belated  wanderer,  in 
the  twilight  roads  of  Tarrytown,  as  he  hears  approaching 
the  j)attcring  gallop  behind  him,  knows  that  it  is  not  his 
ncighbcjr,  it  is  the  Headless  Horseman  of  Sleepy  Hollow. 
It  is  not    thunder  that  we  hear    in   the   Katskill   on  a  still 


commercp:  and  litkraturk  311 

summer  afternoon,  it  is  the  airy  game  of  llcndrik  Hudson's 
crew  that  Rip  Van  Winkle  heard. 

The  commerce  of  New  York  may  penetrate  every  sea,  and 
carry  around  the  world  the  promise  of  the  American  fla"- 
and  the  grandeur  of  the  American  name,  and  return  tri- 
umphant with  the  trophies  of  every  clime;  but  over  their 
leagues  of  wharves  and  towering  warehouses  and  far-stretch- 
ing streets  can  it  throw  a  charm,  as  fresh  to  the  next  cen- 
tury as  to  this,  such  as  the  genius  of  literature  cast  upon 
the  quaint  little  Dutch  town  more  than  two  centuries  ago, 
and  upon  the  river  whicli  is  our  pride  ?  Yet  it  is  commerce 
which  has  made  the  city  splendid  and  prosperous,  which 
pours  the  largest  revenue  into  the  national  treasury,  and  has 
identified  the  name  of  New  York  with  the  most  darin^r 
enterprise  and  comprehensive  sagacity. 

Four  hundred  years  ago,  the  City  of  Florence  was  ruled 
by  a  family  of  merchants,  the  greatest  merchants  in  the 
world.  The  founder  of  the  family  was  given  the  name 
which  we  give  to  Washington  alone,  the  Father  of  his 
Country.  His  grandson,  tlie  greatest  of  the  family,  knew 
the  secret  of  the  greatness  that  endures  whether  in  cities, 
states,  or  nations.  He  was  the  friend  of  authors  and  of 
artists.  He  adopted  Michael  Angelo  as  his  son  ;  he  built 
palaces  and  gardens,  erected  statues,  endowed  universities 
and  libraries,  and  under  his  magnificent  sway  Florence 
reached  its  golden  prime  of  opulence  and  power.  In  him 
Mercury  and  Apollo  clasped  hands,  and  commerce  and  lit- 
erature claim  equally  the  fame  of  Lorenzo  di  Medici. 

As  I  remember  him,  I  think  of  other  merchant  i)rinces. 
As  I  recall  Florence,  I  see  New  York;  and  mindful  of  the 
truth  that  no  other  body  of  merchants  in  the  world  con- 
tains a  larger  proportion  of  men  of  cultivation,  of  refined 
taste  and  generous  and  princely  liberality  than  those  who 
compose  this  Chamber,  I  ask  why,  in  our  noble  pleasure- 
grounds  of  Central  Park,  amid  the  memorials  of  men  of 
kindred  genius  in  every  century  and  time,  in  the  commercial 
capital  in  which  he  was  born,  and  with  which,  as  its  most 
illustrious  son,  his  name  will  be  always  associated — why,  in 
perpetual  commemoration  of  the  amity  of  commerce  and 
literature,  should  not  a  statue  of  Washington  Irving  be 
erected  by  the  merchants  of  New  York  ?     [Cheers.] 


312  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 


L0WELT;S  AMERICANISM 

[Speech  of  George  William  Curtis  at  the  Ashfield  dinner,  at  Ashfield, 
Massachusetts,  August  27,  1891,  in  defence  of  James  Russell  Lowell's 
Americanism.] 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : — In  Browning's  poem  "  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,"  an  old  ItaHan  story  is  told  by 
twelve  persons,  each  in  his  own  way  ;  but  such  is 
the  dramatic  genius  of  the  poet  that  each  version 
resembles  the  others  only  as  different  men  look  alike, 
or  as  this  landscape  now  blossoming  and  green  and  a 
little  later  buried  in  snow  is  still  the  same  country.  These 
different  versions  of  the  same  tale  in  "The  Ring  and 
the  Book "  are  among  the  most  extraordinary  intellect- 
ual feats  or  tours  dc  fo?'cc  in  literature,  and  Mr.  Norton's 
twelve  annual  introductions  of  me  at  the  Ashfield  dinners 
are  similarly  remarkable  feats  in  oratory.  Twelve  times 
has  he  asked  me  to  sing  the  doxology  at  this  dinner,  not, 
I  think,  so  much  thankful  that  it  was  over,  as  grateful  that 
it  had  been  so  good,  and  twelve  times  the  picture  he  has 
drawn  of  me  has  differed  from  the  others,  like  the  versions 
of  the  poet's  story.  But  in  all  these  versions  there  is  nec- 
essarily essentially  the  same  tale  ;  and  so  in  all  the  preludes 
to  my  little  speeches,  although  I  am  amazed  at  their  fresh- 
ness and  variety,  there  has  been  the  same  affectionate  gen- 
erosity of  a  friendship  which  is  now  a  very  long  one,  and 
which  makes  each  of  these  preludes  the  pleasantest  speech 
that  I  hear  in  the  year. 

I  say  that  this  is  the  twelfth  of  them,  but  as  Mr.  Norton 
was  away  one  year,  this  is  the  thirteenth  of  our  academic 
dinners.  The  old  Romans  had  a  series  of  records  which 
they  called  Fasti  Annales,  registers  of  important  events. 
Are  there  any  more  important  events  in  the  history  of  Ash- 
field than  these  annual  dinners  ? — attracting  to  these  tables 
a  friendly  company  from  all  the  country  round,  while  on  the 
horizon  of  this  further  table,  like  brilliant  constellations, 
have  risen,  year  after  year,  as  to-day,  clusters  of  distinguished 
speakers  from  abroad,  but  all  the  guests  at  all  the  tables  are 
American  citizens  met  to  confer  upon  subjects  of  a  common 
interest  and  common  importance,  in  aid  of  that   character- 


Lowell's  Americanism  313 

istic  American  institution  from  which  so  much  of  tlie  im- 
pulse of  the  noblest  American  life  has  sprung,  the  New 
England  academy. 

The  names  of  the  stars  in  these  oratorical  constellations 
that  have  risen  and  set  here  will  readily  occur  to  you. 
They  are  the  golden  beads  that  we  tell  upon  our  rosary  of 
remembrance.  Among  them  there  is  Howells,  our  charming 
story-teller,  whose  stories  reveal  to  us  not  only  the  subtle 
observation  of  the  humorist,  and  the  fine  insight  of  the  so- 
cial philosopher,  but  the  inspiring  vision  of  the  true  realist 
to  whom  man  is  more  than  his  costume  or  circumstance. 
His  work  docs  not  amuse  merely,  but  cheers  and  enlightens. 
It  quickens  human  sympathy  and  stimulates  generous  ac- 
tion. It  is  like  the  flower  which  is  fragrant  and  gay  not 
only  to  please  the  idle  loiterer  of  an  hour  but  to  entice  and 
detain  the  busy  bee  so  as  to  secure  its  own  perpetuity,  and 
by  constantly  renewed  blossoming  and  odor  and  beauty  to 
make  delight  perennial.  Such  a  story-teller  is  a  minister  of 
human  happiness,  and  as  the  modest  master  stood  here 
speaking  to  us  I  thought  of  Goldsmith's  village  pastor: — 

"  He  tried  each  art,  reproved  each  dull  delaj'. 
Allured  to  brighter  worlds  and  led  the  way." 

And  there  is  Warner,  whose  "  Summer  in  a  Garden  "  fs 
in  endless  bloom  ;  and  who  says  in  it  to  his  fellow-farmer 
in  planting  time,  in  the  famous  words  of  Grant,  "  Let  us 
have  peas."  He  has  added  to  the  beatitudes  another  beat- 
itude, "  Blessed  be  agriculture,  if  one  does  not  have  too 
much  of  it."  He  did  not  talk  agriculture  to  us,  probably 
because  he  supposed  we  knew  all  about  his  kind  of  agricul- 
ture ;  nor  horticulture,  as  indeed  there  was  no  need,  because 
he  is  constantly  making  our  minds  gardens  and  sowing 
them  with  pleasant  thoughts  and  fancies  like  violets  and 
mignonette,  summer  savory  and  sweet  marjoram.  But,  as 
we  are  all  naturally  disposed  to  do  here,  he  spoke  of  our 
national  character  and  national  pride  probably  because  he 
hoped  that  our  feeling  was  like  his,  which  does  not  suppose 
that  Mount  Owen  is  higher  than  Mont  Blanc  merely  be- 
cause Mount  Owen  is  in  Franklin  county  and  Mont  Blanc 
in  Switzerland.     Long  ago,  before  I  knew  that  tliere  was  r, 


314  GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 

town  of  Ashfield,  I  drove  one  summer  day  on  the  top  of  the 
stage  from  Greenfield  over  the  Hoosac  mountain  to  Grey- 
lock,  and  when  afterward  I  saw  the  Vale  of  Enna  in  Sicily, 
where  Proserpina  was  playingamong  the  flowers  when  Pluto 
carried  her  off,  I  did  not  think  the  Vale  of  Enna  lovelier 
than  the  valley  of  Deerfield.  But  I  did  not,  therefore, 
think  that  the  meeting-houses  in  that  valley  were  nobler  build- 
ings than  St.  Peter's,  nor  that  Colonel  Eeavitt's  barn  was 
finer  than  the  Vatican,  although  the  Pope  was  a  mere  Italian 
and  the  Colonel  one  of  the  best  of  Yankees.  I  have  not  ob- 
served that  we  are  generally  more  than  seven  feet  high  in 
this  country,  although  we  are  Americans  and  the  other  fel- 
lows only  Europeans.     [Applause.] 

Then  there  was  Mr.  Cable,  who  came  to  our  dinner  and  in  a 
strain  of  fervent  and  persuasive  speech  poured  for  us  a 
"  beaker  full  of  the  warm  South,"  which  still  tingles  in  our 
memories  and  quickens  the  blood  in  our  veins;  and  Mr. 
Choate,  who  expounded  to  us  the  final  cause  and  signifi- 
cance of  the  Ashfield  dinner  in  a  jest  of  such  blended  humor 
and  wit  that  its  laughing  tradition  will  last  as  long  as  the 
dinner  itself ;  and  rising  annually  from  the  horizon  of  this 
table  with  the  brightness  of  Mercury  and  the  constancy  of 
Sirius  to  its  season,  is  the  bright  particular  star  of  Chester- 
field [John  White  Chadwick],  which  for  an  hour  benignantly 
shines  over  our  valley  and  illuminates  our  "Ashfield,  love- 
liest village  of  the  plain."  I  cannot  repeat  the  long  list  of 
those  who  by  their  wise  and  winning  words  have  made  our 
dinners  memorable,  and  whose  eloquence  has  been  at  least 
some  recompense  to  the  kind  hands  of  Ashfield,  which 
annually  spread  and  serve  the  feast, — those  hands,  indeed, 
which,  the  world  over,  sweeten  the  feast  of  life  for  all  men. 

But  there  is  one  orator  among  this  famous  company  of 
many  years  whose  name  in  the  days  that  are  passing  is 
mentioned  with  respectful  and  tender  admiration  wherever 
our  language  is  heard  and  whose  presence  and  speech  will 
be  always  cherished  as  among  the  high  honors  of  our  festi- 
val. That  Mr.  Lowell  has  spoken  at  this  table  gives  to  this 
plain  room  a  dignity  and  charm  which  no  grandeur  of  form, 
no  grace  of  decoration  could  enhance.  I  like  to  remember 
that,  returning  from  his  long  official  residence  abroad,  and 
coming  almost  immediately  to  this  characteristic  New  Eng- 


Lowell's  amkkicaxism  315 

land  town,  the  poet  and  statesman  who,  in  his  life  ami  by 
his  pen  so  truly  interpreted  the  heart  of  New  England  to  the 
heart  of  the  world,  said  how  glad  he  was,  after  looking  in  the 
eyesof  so  many  old  English  audiences,  to  see  again  face  to 
face  a  New  England  one.  In  a  half-playful  tone,  but  with 
great  earnestness, — for  the  banter  was  only  the  sparkle  upon 
a  deep,  strong-flowing  river,— he  alluded  to  the  supposition 
that  long  residence  in  Europe  might  alienate  an  American 
from  love  of  his  country,  as  an  unworthy  distrust  of  the 
power  of  America  to  excite  affection.  Love  of  country,  he 
said,  is  deeper  than  a  sentiment,  deeper  even  than  an  in- 
stinct. It  is  that  absolute  self-renunciation  and  complete 
identification  with  another  which  Ruth  expressed,  "  Where 
thou  goest  I  will  go  ;  where  thou  livest  I  will  live  ;  where 
thou  diest  there  will  I  die  also." 

No  one  who  heard  Mr.  Lowell  that  day  in  this  room  but 
was  taught  by  him  once  more,  for  he  w\as  always  teaching 
it,  the  highest  lesson  of  patriotism.  I  have  seen  it  said 
recently  that  with  all  his  gifts  he  was,  nevertheless,  on  the 
wrong  side  of  every  great  question  in  this  country.  But  I 
venture  to  think  that  whoever  differed  with  Mr.  Lowell 
upon  any  point  of  literature  or  morals  or  politics,  should 
have  been  very  sure  before  he  decided  that  it  was  Mr. 
Lowell  whose  view  was  wrong.  Was  the  young  poet  wrong 
whose  early  verses  tipped  with  fire  the  darts  of  Wendell 
Phillips's  relentless  eloquence?  Was  Hosea  Biglow  on  the 
wrong  side  fifty  years  ago  ?  Was  it  the  "  Commemoration 
Ode,"  the  noblest  pasan  of  the  greatest  cause,  that  struck  a 
false  American  key  ?  Was  it  the  address  on  Democracy 
_  that  betrayed  America,  an  address  which  spoke  to  England 
in  a  strain  of  English  speech  that  England  had  never  heard, 
declaring  the  vital  and  fundamental  American  doctrine,  a 
democrac)^,  deeper,  richer,  truer,  than  England  or  America 
had  ever  grasped,  an  American  speech  which  was  the  flight 
of  our  undazzled  eagle  nearest  the  sun  ?  If  he  was  wrong, 
who  of  us  was  right?  For  what  is  it  to  be  an  American  ? 
It  is  a  most  pertinent  question  for  this  dinner,  and  the 
answer  is  easy  ;  for  to  be  an  American  is  to  be,  in  spirit,  in 
purpose,  in  fidelity,  what  Mr.  Lowell  was.  If  he  was  not  dis- 
tinctively an  American,  the  worse  for  us,  the  worse  for  Amer- 
ica.   If  scorn  of  pretence  of  ever}-  kind,  of  sham  patriotism,  of 


3i6  GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS 

vulgar  bragging,  of  impudent  vanity,  of  bullying  states, 
manship,  of  craven  servility  to  the  majority,  and  of  the  ex- 
altation of  ignorance  and  blackguardism, — if  active  and 
aggressive  scorn  of  all  these  is  not  American,  the  sooner  we 
make  it  so,  the  better.     [Applause.] 

The  clear  perception  that  popular  government,  like  all 
other  governments,  is  an  expedient  and  not  a  panacea  ;  that 
its  abuses  and  evils  must  be  plainly  exposed  and  resolutely 
resisted  ;  that  the  price  of  liberty  is  not  eternal  cringing  to 
a  party,  but  eternal  fidelity  to  our  own  minds  and  con- 
sciences ;  that  our  fathers  made  America  independent,  and 
that  their  sons  must  keep  it  so,  each  man  for  himself  declar- 
ing his  mental,  moral  and  political  independence,  not  only 
on  the  Fourth  of  July,  but  every  day  in  the  year;  that  the 
hope  of  free  institutions  lies  in  character,  in  educated  intel- 
ligence, in  self-reliance,  in  quality,  not  in  quantity, — this  is 
the  sublime  faith,  the  unchilled  hope,  the  untiring  endeavor 
of  a  patriotism  like  Lowell's.  By  a  resistless  humor  of 
kindly  satire  which  searches  out  follies  and  laughs  them 
away,  by  an  incisive  thought  which  probes  and  disperses 
familiar  and  accepted  sophistries,  by  a  vigorous  statement  of 
fundamental  principles  of  political  conduct  illuminated  with 
unprecedented  profusion  and  splendor  of  illustration,  ap- 
plying the  experiences  of  all  other  times  and  countries  to  the 
exigencies  of  our  own,  by  lofty  flights  of  song  that  quicken 
the  heart,  ennoble  the  life,  and  lift  the  soul  toward  heaven, 
— the  poet,  the  scholar,  the  statesman  who  sat  at  our  table 
still  shows  us  the  America  which  we  feel  in  our  hearts  and 
see  in  our  hopes,  the  America  in  Avhich  he  believed  and  of 
which  he  was  so  true  a  harbinger.     [Applause.] 

Such  memories  our  Ashfield  dinner  begins  to  gather. 
Places  that  are  associated  with  famous  men  are  enchanted 
for  all  other  men  by  the  glamour  of  their  genius.  It  is  a 
truth  which  was  never  more  happily  expressed  than  by  our 
distinguished  guest,  Mr.  Phelps,  when  as  our  Minister  in 
England  he  spoke  at  Glasgow  of  the  spell  laid  upon  Scot- 
land by  the  genius  of  Scott  and  Burns,  which  every  year 
draws  a  throng  of  pilgrims,  not  only  to  see  where  they  lived, 
but  to  see  also  the  scenes  of  events  that  never  happened 
and  the  homes  of  people  who  never  lived  except  in  the 
world  of  their  creative  imagination.     The  famous  guests  at 


LOWELL'S   AMERICANISM  317 

our  dinner  have  given  to  this  town-hall  a  precious  tradition 
and  to  these  green  hills  of  western  Massachusetts  another 
charm.  The  spiritual  forces  are  the  most  enduring  forces, 
and  when  Alvan  Sanderson  modestly  planted  here  this  little 
academy,  he  unconsciously  opened  the  gate  by  which  feet 
that  will  be  beautiful  upon  these  mountains  for  ever  have 
passed  through  our  village.     [Applause.] 


CHARLES   ANDERSON  DANA 


DIPLOMACY  AND  THE  PRESS 

[Speech  of  Charles  Anderson  Dana  at  a  banquet  given  by  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York,  April  i6,  1892,  to 
Whitelaw  Reid,  on  the  occasion  of  his  appointment  as  United  Slates 
Minister  to  France.  In  introducing  the  speaker,  Charles  Stewart  Smith, 
President  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  said  :  "  It  is  eminently  fitting 
and  proper  that  this  powerful  exponent  of  public  opinion  should  be  re- 
presented upon  this  occasion  by  the  learned  and  eloquent  Nestor  of  New 
York  journalism."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  : — I  cannot  imagine 
that  there  is  any  occasion  for  any  representative  of  the  press 
to  arise  here  after  Mr.  Reid  has  taken  his  seat.  Who  can 
speak  for  the  press  so  well  as  he  ?  Who  has  had  experience 
so  wide,  so  varied,  so  creditable,  so  successful  as  he  ?  There 
was  in  the  earlier  history  of  this  Republic  a  school  of 
thinkers  who  held  that  diplomacy  was  comparatively  un- 
necessary, that  we  should  have  no  foreign  ministers,  except 
upon  special  occasions,  when  they  might  be  sent  out  to 
settle  some  pressing  controversy,  and  then  come  home, 
leaving  the  country  without  any  representative  except  its 
consuls  in  foreign  lands.  That  school  was  never  very  ex- 
tensive. So  far  as  I  am  aware,  its  principal  members  were 
two  men  of  different  parties  and  most  distinguished  genius. 
One  of  them  was  Thomas  H.  Benton,  a  great  and  broad- 
minded  statesman,  of  the  earlier  days  of  our  political  life ; 
and  the  other  was  another  man  of  genius,  Horace  Greeley. 
[Laughter  and  applause.] 

They  both  taught  this  doctrine,  and  taught  it  with  such 
ability  and  such  success  that  they  made  at  least  one  con- 
vert, and  at  an  early  age  I  entered  their  school  myself. 
[Laughter.]     I  also  know  of  one  other  newspaper  man  who 

318 


DIPLOMACY    AND    J  UK    PRKSS  319 

belonged  to  the  school,  but  it  never  was  a  successful  party; 
it  never  got  any  standing  in  the  world  ;  the  American  people 
never  adopted  the  idea, — and  why  ? 

Well,  in  the  first  place,  there  is  a  kind  of  politeness  and 
good  society  among  nations,  which  requires  that  every 
power,  every  nation  of  any  consequence,  should  have  its 
regular  representatives  near  to  the  governments  of  other 
nations.  That  is  a  kind  of  international  honor,  which  the 
world  has  never  been  willing  to  resign.  We  all  agree — I 
have  joined  the  other  side,  I  have  gone  over  to  the  major- 
ity [applause] — we  all  agree  that  diplomatic  representatives 
and  ministers  maintained  permanently  abroad  are  indispen- 
sable for  the  good  conduct  of  international  affairs.  Another 
consideration  also  bears  upon  this  question.  There  are 
certain  offices,  certain  political  and  public  functions,  which 
are  indispensable  to  the  conduct  of  society.  There  must 
be  governors,  there  must  be  legislators,  there  must  be  judges, 
there  must  be  tax-collectors — all  those  functions  are  ab- 
solutely necessary,  and  they  are  maintained  as  a  matter  of 
necessity  ;  but  the  catalogue  of  public  offices  is  not  com- 
plete with  those  indispensable  functionaries.  It  has  to  go 
further.  We  must  have  ofificers  who,  under  certain  cir- 
cumstances and  to  a  certain  extent,  are  ornamental ;  there 
must  be  places  of  importance  for  public  men  of  distinction. 
They  cannot  all  be  elected  judges  or  lieutenant-governors 
or  members  of  Congress  or  Senators  ;  there  must  be  other 
places  to  which,  when  a  new  President  comes  into  power, 
he  can  send  the  distinguished  men  of  his  party,  and  he 
ought  not  to  send  any  other  to  foreign  lands,  as  the 
representatives  of  the  government  and  of  the  power  and 
dignity  of  the  United  States. 

For  a  great  part  of  the  time  these  foreign  representatives 
of  ours  may  have  very  little  to  do  ;  but  it  is  indispensable, 
I  think,  to  have  them  there,  and  when  the  occasion  arises, 
when  there  is  a  need,  when  there  is  some  important  question 
to  be  settled,  then  we  must  have  them  there  ;  and  unless 
they  are  there,  with  some  antecedents  and  some  experience 
and  some  knowledge  of  the  medium  in  which  they  have  to 
labor,  and  of  the  men  with  whom  they  have  to  deal,  their 
efforts  would  be  comparatively  ineffectual  and  useless.  So 
we  have  for  all  these  reasons  come  over  to  the  doctrine  that 


320  CHARLES  ANDERSON  DANA 

there  must  be  a  diplomatic  establishment  maintained  by  the 
United  States. 

Now,  we  do  not  maintain  it  as  other  countries  do.  The 
old  governments  make  diplomacy  a  profession ;  men  are 
educated  to  it ;  they  make  their  careers  in  it ;  they  follow 
that  business  all  their  lives  through.  Here  we  do  not  do  it 
that  way,  for  the  reason  that  this  is  a  government  of  change  ; 
that  it  is  a  government  in  which  men  pass  from  one  sphere 
of  life  to  another,  and  in  which  they  are  promoted  accord- 
ing to  their  deserts  ;  so  that  we,  instead  of  educating  our 
diplomats  to  be  diplomats,  put  them  early  in  life  into 
newspaper  ofifices,  and  when  they  graduate  it  is  to  some- 
thing brilliant  and  admirable.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

The  honors  which  you  are  paying  to  our  distinguished 
fellow-citizen,  Mr.  Reid,  this  evening,  are  not  only  well 
deserved,  but,  as  has  been  remarked  they  are  paid  in  sub- 
stance by  all  parties  in  this  country.  [Applause.]  When 
you  can  get  not  merely  a  Republican  like  my  friend,  Mr. 
Smith,  and  a  celebrated  Mugwump  like  my  friend  Cou- 
dert  [laughter],  and  modest  and  unpretentious  Democrats 
like  Senator  Brice  and  myself  [laughter],  to  come  here  and 
join  in  the  honor;  and  when  General  Schurz,  the  worst 
Mugwump  of  them  all  comes  [laughter],  and  when  they 
all  combine  in  paying  this  well-deserved  tribute  to  a  dis- 
tinguished and  successful  public  servant,  we  may  be  sure 
that  the  honor  is  perfectly  deserved,  and  that  greater  services 
hereafter  may  be  expected  from  the  gentleman  who  has 
rendered  them.      [Applause.] 

The  fact  is  that  there  is  not  an  important  public  service 
that  a  successful  newspaper  man  is  not  perfectly  well  able 
to  render,  on  the  shortest  notice.  [Laughter  and  ap- 
plause.] The  foundation  of  success  such  as  Mr.  Reid  has 
achieved,  is  considerably  made  up  of  good  fortune;  it  is  not 
merely  taleiit  ;  it  is  not  merely  devotion  to  duty  undertaken; 
it  is  not  merely  concentration  of  every  faculty  ;  but,  after 
all,  good-luck  comes  into  it  very  considerably.  This  good- 
luck  1  like  to  see  further  illustrated  in  the  case  of  our  distin- 
guished guest  of  this  evening.      [Applause.] 

The  past  at  least  is  secure.  [Applause.]  That  is  a  com- 
mon saying,  but  the  past  is  always  a  pointer  to  the  future, 
and  these  distinctions,  outside  of    those    stricth'    belonging 


NEW    ENGLAND    IN    JOURNALISM  32I 

to  the  newspaper  press,  must  be  placed  upon  Mr.  Rcid  here- 
after, as  the  laurel  is  placed  upon  the  head  of  a  great  and 
successful  soldier. 

We  shall  feel,  we  who  belong  to  the  newspaper  press, 
whether  in  the  capacity  of  retired  members,  like  General 
Schurz,  or  active  members  like  my  friend,  Mr.  Halstead, 
or  occasional  contributors,  like  my  friend,  Mr.  Coudert 
[laughter], — we  shall  all  feel  that  a  part  of  the  honor  and  a 
part  of  the  renown  belongs  to  the  profession  of  which  Mr. 
Reid  is  so  distinguished  a  member.     [Applause.] 


NEW  ENGLAND  IN  JOURNALISM 

[Speech  of  Charles  A.  Dana  at  the  fourteenth  annual  festival  of  the 
New  England  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  Philadelphia,  December  22,  1894. 
The  President,  Charles  Emory  Smith,  said  in  introducing  Mr.  Dana  : 
"  We  are  honored  to-night  with  the  presence  of  one  wlio  is  universally 
recognized  by  his  professional  brethren  and  by  the  general  public,  as  the 
foremost  journalist  of  the  United  States  ;  that  is  to  say,  to-day,  of  all  the 
world  ;  at  once  the  most  experienced  and  the  most  accomplished,  the 
wisest,  and  the  brightest,  the  Hercules  with  the  heaviest  club,  and  the 
Harlequin,  if  I  may  say  so,  with  the  lightest  lathe-sword  ;  the  intrepid 
American  patriot  who,  in  a  single  vivid  phrase,  immortalized  and  killed 
an  un-American  measure  when  he  called  it  '  the  policy  of  infamy,'  the 
discoverer,  perhaps  I  should  say  of  Dink  Botts  and  Abe  vSluskey.  With 
all  these  attributes,  I  may  fairly  describe  him  as  the  Nestor  and  the 
jester,  the  bon-savant  and  the  bon-vivant  of  American  journalism— him- 
self sharing  and  preserving  the  fame  of  the  greatest  group  of  journalists 
the  world  has  ever  seen,  given  to  this  country  by  New  England.  No 
one  is  so  capable  of  speaking  of  New  England  journalism  as  the  Hon. 
Charles  A.  Dana,  of  the  New  York  'Sun,'  whom  I  now  present."] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen — New  Engi>anders, 
Brethren — all  of  one  blood  and  all  of  one  spirit  : — 
I  care  not  to  what  parties  in  politics,  to  what  schools  in 
thought,  to  what  churches  in  religion  we  respectively  be- 
long, there  is  one  heart  in  all  of  us,  and  it  is  the  heart  of 
New  England.     [Applause.] 

I  am  here,  I  believe,  though  the  Chairman  avoided  read- 
ing the  toast,  to  speak  on  "  New  England  in  Journalism  ;  " 
and  I  am  exceedingly  glad  of  this  opportunity  to  render 
justice  to  my  brethren  of  that  profession  whom  1  see  here 
around  me.  It  is  a  remarkable  circumstance  that  my  eye 
falls  at  this  moment,  without  wandering  any  distance  from 
21 


0-'- 


CHARLES   ANDERSON    DANA 


where  I  stand,  upon  four  eminent  Yankee  journalists  whom 
we  all  know  and  whom  we  are  all  wont  to  honor.  On  my 
left  hand  I  see  the  Reverend  Dr.  Conwell ;  on  my  right 
hand  there  is  the  Reverend  Dr.  Wayland — a  noble  son,  let 
me  say,  of  a  nobler  father; — here,  too,  is  the  honored  Dr. 
Trumbull  ;  and  here,  chief  of  all,  is  my  honored  and  be- 
loved friend — the  friend  of  many  years — Charles  Emory 
Smith.  Where  can  we  look  for  better  illustrations  of  the 
New  England  character  ?  Where  can  we  look  for  brighter 
genius,  ready  for  every  emergency  and  shedding  light  upon 
every  event  and  upon  every  occasion  ?  Where  is  there  wit 
and  humor  like  Dr.  Wayland's?  Where  is  there  the 
elevated  and  lovely  religious  sentiment  that  can  surpass 
Dr.  Trumbull's  ?  Where  is  the  appeal  to  the  popular  heart 
in  behalf  of  the  divine  truths  of  Christianity  that  goes  be- 
yond Dr.  Conwell's?  And  where,  let  me  ask,  in  that  high 
intelligence  of  the  philosophy  of  journalism,  of  the  phi- 
losophy which  forms  public  thought  and  directs  public 
policy  from  the  beginning,  which  takes  hold  of  it  in  the 
seed  and  carries  it  forward  to  development  and  blooming 
perfection — where  is  there  any  one  who  is  entitled  to  higher 
honor  and  a  more  beautiful  laurel  than  my  friend,  Charles 
Emory  Smith  ? 

Gentlemen,  here  we  have  "  New  England  in  Journalism," 
and  we  do  not  need  to  look  any  farther  for  its  illustration. 
I  say  to  you,  young  man  (turning  to  President  Smith), 
standing,  crowned  with  honors,  almost  at  the  very  threshold 
of  your  career,  I  say  to  you,  only  persevere.  Remember 
above  all  that  you  are  an  American  ;  remember  that  the 
principles  of  the  American  Republic  are  the  principles  you 
have  to  defend.  I  am  an  old  man  and  shall  not  live  to  see 
you  complete  and  round  out  that  glorious  course  of  the 
defence  of  free  thought,  of  right  politics  and  of  America  that 
you  A\  ill  live  to  see  ;  but  I  look  forward  to  it  with  confidence, 
antl  1  salute  it  beforehand  with  the  pride  which  a  father 
may  feel  in  the  prospects  of  his  son.      [Applause.] 


RICHARD   HENRY   DANA 


RUSSIA  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

[Speech  of  Richard  H.  Dana,  Jr.,  at  the  Ijanquet  given  by  the  City  of 
Boston,  June  7,  1864,  to  Rear-Adniiral  Lessoffsky  and  the  officers  of  the 
Russian  Fleet,  then  visiting  American  waters.  I\Ir.  Dana  responded  to 
the  toast  :  "The  Admiralty  and  Maritime  Courts  of  Russia  and  the 
United  States  : — may  they  never  adjudicate  in  questions  of  prize  upon 
American  or  Russian  vessels."] 

Mr.  Mayor  : — Adjudication  upon  prizes,  though  it  may 
have  a  judicial  sound,  means  war  ;  and  war  between  Russia 
and  the  United  States  of  America  I  take  to  be  as  improbable 
as  anything  in  human  affairs.  If  nearly  a  century  of  har- 
mony and  good  ofifices  indicates  anything,  or  furnishes  any 
security  for  future  peace,  we  have  the  fullest  assurances  here. 

When  we  were  in  the  struggle  for  our  independence,  to 
throw  off  the  rule  of  distant  government  in  which  we  had  no 
voice  or  hand,  which  claimed  an  unlimited  jurisdiction  over 
us,  and  all  we  had,  we  sent  to  Russia  a  citizen  of  Massa- 
chusetts [Chief  Justice  Dana,  of  Massachusetts]  to  Avhom 
you,  sir,  and  Mr.  Everett,  have  kindly  alluded  in  connection 
with  my  name  ;  and,  although  she  gave  us  no  fleet  or  army, 
Ave  got  from  her  a  moral  support,  which  did  much — those 
familiar  with  that  history  know  how  much — towards  securing, 
at  last,  the  recognition  of  our  independence.  This,  sir, 
was  a  good  beginning,  and  circumstances  made  sure  for 
years  a  fair  following  of  the  beginning.  In  that  dark  period 
of  wars  the  world  around,  when  neutrals  were  in  danger  of 
being  crushed  between  the  giant  belligerents  at  sea,  Russia 
and  the  United  States  had  a  common  interest,  and  were 
kept  in  sympathy  and  co-operation  on  the  great  questions  of 
belligerent  and  neutral  rights.  It  was  not  only  the  fear  of 
the  mistress  of  the  sea  that  oppressed  neutral  commerce. 


324  RICHARD    HENRY    DANA 

There  was  almost  as  much  danger  from  coercion,  in  ports  on 
the  Continent  by  the  feebler  maritime  power  of  France. 
Thus,  neutrals  were  threatened  if  they  did  not  co-operate 
with  the  weaker,  or  submit  to  the  law  of  the  stronger.  In 
that  partial  eclipse  of  peace  and  commerce  that  covered  so 
long  the  habitable  globe,  Russia  and  the  United  States 
together  strove  for  the  light  of  peace  and  the  beneficence  of 
commercial  intercourse. 

But,  sir,  Russia  has  not  only  maintained  peace  with  us, 
but  has  kindly  and  wisely  done  her  best  to  keep  us  at  peace 
with  the  world.  When  the  War  of  1812  was  upon  us,  she 
offered,  as  Mr.  Everett  has  reminded  us,  her  mediation. 
She  did  not  ask  the  contending  parties  to  abide  her  decision 
as  an  arbiter,  or  to  allow  of  her  intervention.  She  asked 
them  only  to  receive  her  advice  as  a  mediator.  We  accepted 
the  offer  at  once,  and  empowered  our  ministers  to  act  upon 
it.  Great  Britain  refused  it,  and  the  war  was  fought  out  to 
its  end.  I  hope  she  had  good  reasons  for  the  refusal  ;  but 
Sir  James  Mackintosh  did  not  think  so,  and  censured  the 
refusal  in  terms  of  strong  condemnation.  Again,  the  treaty 
of  1782  had  left  open  a  question  of  compensation  for  prop- 
erty— including  slaves,  I  regret  to  say — on  territory  which 
England  was  to  restore  to  us.  To  whom  did  we  go  for 
arbitration?  Why,  to  Russia,  most  naturally;  and  the  ar- 
bitration of  Russia,  made,  and  repeated  on  new  questions 
arising  out  of  the  first  decision,  was  satisfactory.  But  there 
was  one  question  between  us,  of  such  magnitude  and  dififi- 
culty  that  neither  of  the  treaties — that  of  Paris,  in  1782,  nor 
that  of  Ghent,  in  18 14 — seemed  able  to  close  it, — that  was  the 
northern  boundary.  Nearly  the  whole  line,  from  the  Island 
of  Grand  Menan,  off  Eastport,  to  the  Lake  of  the  Woods, 
was  in  dispute.  Such  was  our  confidence  in  Russia,  that  we 
were  ready  to  put  all  our  rights  and  interests  on  that  vast 
issue  in  her  hands.  England  objected  to  the  arbitration  of 
Russia,  and  we  fell  back  upon  the  unlucky  King  of  the 
Netherlands,  whose  "  Dutch  highlands,"  lying  in  the  beds 
of  rivers,  left  the  question  open,  with  all  its  elements  of 
irritation,  until  it  was  closed  by  the  great  act  of  three  men, 
capable  of  large  ideas  and  high  action, — Peel,  Webster  and 
Ashburton,  in  1842. 

This  is  not  all,  sir.     Our   day  of  distress,  weakness  and 


RUSSIA    AND    THE    UNITICD    STATES  325 

peril  came  upon  us.  We  met  with  sad  disappointment 
in  the  tone  of  speech  from  friendly  nations.  They  told  us, 
by  the  speeches  of  statesmen  and  the  voice  of  the  press,  that 
we  had  grown  too  strong,  and  that  we  must  expect  them  to 
wish  for  our  division.  Some,  more  civilly,  assured  us  it  was 
for  our  good  to  be  divided.  "  Rise  and  be  hanged,  Master 
Barnardine  !  These  are  your  friends,  the  hangmen,  Master 
Barnardine  !  "  I  hope  we  may  forget,  no  doubt  we  should 
^try  to  forget,  the  ill-concealed  delight  with  which  our  mis- 
■  fortunes  were  witnessed,  as  well  as  the  open  derision  and 
obloquy,  that  was  poured  upon  us  in  those  days:  the  utmost 
efforts  made  to  secure  against  us  the  opinion  of  the  world 
on  every  available  ground.  And  when  the  commander  of 
a  sloop  of  war,  uninstructcd,  does  an  act,  the  legality  of 
which  the  law  officers  of  the  British  Crown  and  the  British 
press  first  admitted  and  then  questioned,  without  waiting  to 
learn  whether  our  Government  sustained  or  repudiated  it,  the 
British  Government,  which,  in  any  other  state  of  this  coun- 
try, would  have  unquestionably  made  it  matter  of  diplo- 
matic inquiry,  availed  themselves  of  the  occasion  to  make  a 
military  and  naval  demonstration  against  our  blockade  and 
entire  war, — for  that  I  take  to  have  been  the  plain  English 
of  the  war  movement  in  the  Trent  affair. 

From  this  trying  picture,  how  pleasing  it  is  to  turn  to  the 
aspect  which  Russia  presented  to  us.  Mr.  Everett  has  read 
to  us  the  friendly  and  graceful  message  of  Russia  to  America 
sent  to  us  in  our  darkest  hour, — telling  us  that  the  preserva- 
tion of  our  Union  was  essential  to  the  universal  political 
equilibrium,  and  that  Russia  stood  pledged  to  the  most 
friendly  interest.  Well  did  Mr.  Seward,  in  reply,  acknowl- 
edge that  the  friendship  of  Russia  "  had  its  beginning  with 
the  national  existence  of  the  United  States." 

I  must  return,  Mr.  Mayor,  to  the  subject  to  which  you 
more  immediately  directed  my  attention,  the  prize  courts 
and  navy  of  Russia.  Of  its  courts,  I  cannot  speak  from 
personal  knowledge  ;  but  of  its  navy,  it  has  been  my  fortune 
to  know  something.  I  have  met  Russian  ships  of  war  in  all 
quarters  of  the  globe.  At  the  Sandwich  Islands,  they  told 
me  with  delight  of  the  escape  of  the  frigate  "  Diana  "  from  a 
British  fleet  which  came  to  Honolulu,  in  1854,  a  few  days 
after  the  "  Diana  "  hurried  awav  ;— that  same  frigate  whose 


326  RICHARD    HENRY    DANA 

sin<Tular  fate,  a  few  months  afterwards,  attracted  the  atten- 
tion of  the  scientific  world,  lifted  up  from  her  anchors  in 
Simoda  Bay,  in  Japan,  and  swamped  by  one  monstrous 
swell  of  the  sea,  in  a  quiet  day,  which  rolled  from  Japan  to 
California  with  the  regularity  of  the  march  of  a  planet, 
raising  and  plunging  everything  in  its  course,  until  its  last 
effects  were  registered  by  the  astonished  watchers  of  the 
tide-gauges  at  San  Diego  and  San  Francisco.  And  when  I 
was  mentioning  this,  just  now,  to  the  Russian  ofificer  whom 
I  have  the  pleasure  of  finding  at  my  side,  he  replied, — "  O 
yes  !  our  admiral  commanded  the  '  Diana  '  then." 

I  met  them  in  China,  in  Japan,  and  I  found  a  squadron 
at  San  Francisco  ;  and  when  I  went  to  the  navy  yard  at 
Mare  Island,  in  California,  there  I  found  a  room  full  of 
Russian  naval  officers  who  had  been  examining  our  works. 
Wherever  science,  or  general  knowledge,  or  national  interests 
called  them,  there  Russian  ships  of  war  were  found.  And 
our  friends  will  not  think  me  indelicate  or  assuming  if  I  pay 
my  tribute  to  the  high  order  of  education  I  always  found 
among  them.  All  spoke  French, — and  the  world  knows 
that  Russian  French  is  the  best  out  of  Paris, — and  most 
spoke  English  also ;  and  it  is  well  known  that  among 
Russian  naval  officers  are  found  competent  representatives 
of  their  country  in  diplomacy  and  science  as  well  as  war. 

Let  me  ask  your  leave,  sir,  to  propose,  not  as  a  formal 
toast, — that  is  not  my  office, — but  as  a  sentiment  to  be  taken 
into  our  hearts :  The  friendship  of  Russia  and  America, 
beginning  with  our  national  existence,  in  our  darkest  hour 
showing  no  abatement,  may  it  last  as  long  as  there  shall  be 
Russia  in  the  old  world  and  United  States  in  the  new. 
[Applause.] 


CHAUNCEY  MITCHELL   DEPEW 
Photogravure  after  a  photograph  from  life 


CHAUNCEY  MITCHELL   DEPEW 


WOMAN 


[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  the  seventieth  anniversary 
banquet  of  the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  Di-- 
cember  22,  1875.  The  President  of  the  Society,  Isaac  H.Bailey,  presided. 
In  introducing  the  speaker,  he  said:  "Gentlemen,  our  next  toast  is 
'  Woman. ' 

'  From  women's  eyes  this  doctrine  I  derive. 
They  sparkle  still  the  right  Promethean  fire, 
They  are  the  books,  the  arts,  the  Academes, 
That  show,  contain  and  nourish  all  the  world.' 

[Love's  Labor's  Lost,  Act  IV.,  Sc.  3.] 

"  Gentlemen,  this  toast  will  be  responded  to  by  one  who  deserves  to  be 
known  as  an  expert  on  all  questions  that  concern  the  fair  sisters — Mr. 
Chauncey  M.  Depew."] 

Mr.  President  : —  I  know  of  no  act  of  my  life  which  justi- 
fies your  assertion  that  I  am  an  expert  on  this  question.  I  can 
very  well  understand  why  it  is  that  the  toast  to  "  Woman  " 
should  follow  the  toast  to  "the  Press."  [Laughter.]  I  am 
called  upon  to  respond  to  the  best,  the  most  suggestive,  and 
the  most  important  sentiment  which  has  been  delivered  this 
evening,  at  this  midnight  hour,  when  the  varied  and  cease- 
less flow  of  eloquence  has  exhausted  subjects  and  audience, 
when  the  chairs  are  mainly  vacant,  the  bottles  empty,  and  the 
oldest  veteran  and  most  valiant  Roman  of  us  all  scarce  dares 
meet  the  doom  he  knows  awaits  him  at  home.  [Laughter.] 
Bishop  Berkeley,  when  he  wrote  his  beautiful  verses  upon 
our  Western  World,  and  penned  the  line  "Time's  noblest 
offspring  is  the  last,"  described  not  so  nearly  our  prophetic 
future  as  the  last  and  best  creation  of  the  Almighty — woman 
—  whom  we  both  love  and  worship.  [Applause.]  We  have 
here  the  President  of  the  United  States  and  the  General  of  our 

327 


328  CHAUXXEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

Armies:  around  these  tables  is  gathered  a  galaxy  of  intellect, 
genius  and  achievement  seldom  presented  on  any  occasion, 
but  none  of  them  would  merit  the  applause  we  so  enthusiasti- 
cally bestow,  or  have  won  their  high  honors,  had  they  not 
been  guided  or  inspired  by  the  woman  they  revered  or 
loved. 

I  have  noticed  one  peculiarity  about  the  toasts  this  eve- 
ning very  remarkable  in  the  New  England  Society  :  every  one 
of  them  is  a  quotation  from  Shakespeare.  If  Elder  l^rewster 
and  Carver  and  Cotton  Mather,  the  early  divines  of  Massa- 
chusetts, and  the  whole  colony  of  Plymouth  could  have  been 
collected  together  in  general  assembly,  and  have  seen  with 
prophetic  vision  the  flower  of  their  descendants  celebrating 
the  virtues  of  this  ancestry  in  sentiments  every  one  of  which 
was  couched  in  the  language  of  a  playwright,  what  would 
they  have  said  ?  [Laughter.]  The  imagination  cannot 
compass  the  emotions  and  the  utterances  of  the  occasion. 
But  I  can  understand  Avhy  this  has  been  done.  It  is  because 
the  most  versatile  and  distinguished  actor  upon  our  muni- 
cipal stage  is  the  President  of  the  New  England  Society. 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  We  live  in  an  age  when  from  the 
highest  offices  of  our  city  the  incumbent  seeks  the  stage  to 
achieve  his  greatest  honors.  [Laughter.]  I  see  now  our 
worthy  President,  Mr.  Bailey,  industriously  thumbing  his 
Shakespeare  to  select  these  toasts.  He  admires  the  airy 
grace  and  flitting  beauty  of  Titania  ;  he  weeps  over  the  mis- 
fortunes of  Desdemona  and  Ophelia.  Each  individual  hair 
stands  on  end  as  he  contemplates  the  character  of  Lady 
Macbeth  ;  but  as  he  spends  his  nights  with  Juliet,  he  softly 
murmurs,  "  Parting  is  such  sweet  sorrow."     [Loud  laughter.] 

You  know  it  is  a  physiological  fact  that  the  boys  take  after 
their  mothers,  and  reproduce  the  characteristics  and  intel- 
lectual qualities  of  the  maternal,  and  not  the  paternal,  side. 
Standing  here  in  the  presence  of  the  most  worthy  represent- 
atives of  Plymouth,  and  knowing  as  I  do  your  moral  and 
mental  worth,  the  places  you  fill,  and  the  commercial,  finan- 
cial, humane  and  catholic  impetus  you  give  to  our  met- 
ropolitan life,  how  can  I  do  otherwise  than  on  bended  knee 
reverence  the  New  England  mothers  who  gave  you  birth  ! 
[Applause.]  Your  President,  in  his  speech  to-night,  spoke 
of  himself  asa  descendant  of  JohnAlden.     In  my  judgment, 


\V(XMAN  329 

Priscilla  uttered  the  sciUinu;nt  wliich  gave  the  Yankee  the 
key-note  of  success,  ;ukI  condensed  the  primal  elements  of 
his  character,  when  she  said  to  John  Alden,  "  Prythee,  why 
don't  you  speak  for  yourself,  John  ?  "  (  Luughtcr. )  That 
motto  has  been  the  spear  in  the  rear  and  the  star  in  the  van 
of  the  New-Englander's  progress.  It  has  made  liim  the 
most  audacious,  self-reliant,  and  irrepressible  member  of 
the  human  family  ;  and  for  illustration  we  need  look  no 
farther  than  the  present  descendant  of  rriscilla  and  Jolm 
A'dcn.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

The  only  way  I  can  reciprocate  your  call  at  this  late  hour 
is  to  keej)  you  here  as  long  I  can.  I  think  I  sec  now  the 
descendant  of  a  "  Mayflower  "  immortal  who  has  been  listen- 
ing here  to  the  glories  of  his  ancestry,  and  learning  that  he  is 
"  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,"  as  puffed  and  swollen  with  pride 
of  race  and  history,  he  stands  solitary  and  alone  upon  his 
doorstep,  reflects  on  his  broken  promise  of  an  earl)^  return, 
and  remembers  that  within  "  there  is  a  divinity  which  shapes 
his  end."     [Applause  and  laughter.] 

In  all  ages  woman  has  been  the  source  of  all  that  is  pure, 
unselfish,  and  heroic  in  the  spirit  and  life  of  man.  It  was 
for  love  that  Antony  lost  a  world.  It  was  for  love  that 
Jacob  worked  seven  long  years,  and  for  seven  more  ;  and  I 
have  often  wondered  what  must  have  been  his  emotions 
when  on  the  morningof  the  eighth  year  he  awoke  and  found 
the  homely,  scrawny,  bony  Leah  instead  of  the  lovely  and 
beautiful  presence  of  his  beloved  Rachel.  [Laughter.]  A 
distinguished  French  philosopher  answered  the  narrative 
of  every  event  with  the  question, **  Who  was  she?"  Helen 
conquered  Troy,  plunged  all  the  nations  of  antiquity  into 
war,  and  gave  that  earliest,  as  it  is  still  the  grandest,  epic  which 
has  come  down  through  all  time.  Poetry  and  fiction  are 
based  upon  woman's  love,  and  the  movements  of  history  arc 
mainly  due  to  the  sentiments  or  ambitions  she  has  inspired. 
Semiramis,  Zenobia,  Queen  Elizabeth,  claim  a  cold  and 
distant  admiration  ;  they  do  not  touch  the  heart.  But 
when  Florence  Nightingale,  or  Grace  Darling,  or  Ida  Lewis, 
unselfish  and  unheralded,  peril  all  to  succor  and  to  save, 
the  jjrofoundest  and  holiest  emotions  of  our  nature  render 
them  tribute  and  homage.  [Applause.]  Mr.  President, 
there  is  no  aspiration  which  any  man  here  to-night  entertains, 


330  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

no  achievement  he  seeks  to  accomplish,  no  great  and  honor- 
able ambition  he  desires  to  gratify,  which  is  not  directly 
related  to  either  or  both  a  mother  or  a  wife.  [Applause.] 
From  the  hearth-stone  around  which  linger  the  recollections 
of  our  mother,  from  the  fireside  where  our  wife  awaits  us, 
come  all  the  purity,  all  the  hope,  and  all  the  courage  with 
which  we  fight  the  battle  of  life.  [Applause.]  The  man 
who  is  not  thus  inspired,  who  labors  not  so  much  to  secure 
the  applause  of  the  world  as  the  solid  and  more  precious 
approval  of  his  home,  accomplishes  little  of  good  for  others 
or  of  honor  for  himself.  I  close  with  the  hope  that  each  of 
us  may  always  have  near  us. 

"  A  perfect  woman,  nobly  planned, 
To  warn,  to  comfort,  and  command, 
And  yet  a  spirit  still,  and  bright 
With  something  of  an  angel  light." 
[Applause.] 


WELCOME  TO  MAYOR  COOPER 

[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  a  dinner  given  by  the  Lotos  Club, 
January  ii,  1879,  to  Edward  Cooper,  Mayor  of  New  York,  on  his 
election.  The  President,  Whitelaw  Reid,  occupied  the  chair,  and 
toward  the  end  of  the  speaking,  addressed  Mr.  Depew  as  follows  :  "  You 
may  possibly  think  that  we  have  got  through  with  the  various  branches 
of  the  elaborate  and  almost  perfect  system  of  municipal  government 
under  which  we  live.  If  you  do,  you  make  a  mistake.  We  live  under 
the  rule,  I  may  say,  the  divided  rule  of  a  Mayor  and  a  Controller,  and  we 
live  also  under  the  alien  rule  of  a  Legislature.  But  we  live,  too,  under 
another  branch — a  branch  equal  to  any,  perhaps  greater  than  all.  It  is  a 
branch  which  is  always  represented  ;  it  is  a  branch  which  appears  in  the 
Lotos  Club  by  attorney.  I  need  not  tell  you  that  I  refer  to  the  New 
York  Central  Railroad  [laughter],  or  that  I  shall  call  upon  Chauncey 
M.  Depew  to  respond."] 

Mr.  President  : — When  you  were  describing  the  gentle- 
man upon  whom  you  were  to  call,  I  thought,  until  the  last 
clause  of  your  last  sentence,  that  you  were  referring  to  the 
Judiciary  of  the  State.  There  are  many  points  of  resem- 
blance between  the  New  York  Central  Railroad  and  the 
State  Judiciary,  in  that  in  the  administration  of  the  affairs 
of  the  Commonwealth  they  both  delight  to  do  equal  justice 
to  all.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 


WELCOME    TO    MAYOR   COOI'lOR  33 1 

I  have  been  a  member  of  the  Lotos  Club  for  many  years, 
but  this  is  the  most  extraordinary  and  anomalous  gathcrin<^ 
which  I  have  ever  attended.  [Laughter.]  Judge  Davis 
and  myself  have  during  the  evening  been  looking  at  a  work 
of  art,  which  for  more  than  ten  years  has  adorned  the  walls 
of  the  Lotos  Club,  and  that  is  this  lion  with  a  toothache 
that  hangs  on  an  adjoining  wall.  [Great  laughter.]  The 
question  in  our  minds  is — where  is  the  lamb  ?  And  the  only 
location  that  we  can  decide  upon  for  it  is  that  the  lamb 
must  be  inside.     [Renewed  laughter,] 

Well,  gentlemen,  that  is  a  very  suitable  picture.  I  find 
here  on  one  side  of  this  table  the  Grand  Sachem  of  Tam- 
many, and  immediately  opposite  a  gentleman  who  wanted 
to  be  Grand  Sachem.  [Laughter.]  I  find  here  the  gentle- 
man who  ran  for  Mayor  and  was  elected  and  the  gentle- 
man who  contested  for  that  honor  with  him  [Hon.  Augus- 
tus Schell]  and  was  defeated.  I  find  here  Tammany  and 
anti-Tammany,  Administration  Republicans,  and  anti- 
Administration  Republicans,  and  every  representative  of 
public  spirit  and  public  opinion  except  Liberal  Republi- 
cans. [Laughter.]  I  think  there  are  gathered  around  this 
festive  board  more  integrity  [laughter],  more  devotion  to 
the  public  service,  more  capacity  for  the  public  good,  more 
distinguished  men  in  and  out  of  ofifice  [laughter],  and 
more  abominable  politics  than  were  ever  gathered  anywhere 
else.  [Great  laughter.]  Mr.  Reid  represents  bullion,  Mr. 
Croly  [D.  G.  Croly]  silver,  and  together  they  seek  to  restore 
a  standard  by  which  each  can  receive  in  his  own  metal  all 
he  possibly  can  lay  his  hands  upon.     [Great  laughter.] 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  Lotos  Club  that  it  welcomes  the 
incoming  and  bids  farewell  to  the  outgoing  Mayor.  There 
have  been  chief  magistrates  of  this  city  who  have  endeavored 
to  ignore  this  courtesy,  but  their  administrations  in  every 
instance  have  proved  lamentable  failures.  [Laughter.] 
When  a  mayor  is  elected,  he  reads  the  messages  of  his  pre- 
decessors for  the  purpose  of  forming  his  own,  until  he  is 
threatened  with  water  on  the  brain.  [Laughter.]  He 
reads  the  reports  of  the  Controller  for  the  purpose  of  ascer- 
taining the  financial  condition  of  the  city,  until  his  friends 
call  on  Dr.  Macdonald  to  watch  over  him  to  keep  him  out  of 
the    asylum,    to    which    he    is    rapidly    making    his     way. 


332  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

[Laughter.]  Then  it  is  found  necessary  to  brace  him  up 
with  some  intellectual  stimulants  and  the  hopeful  atmos- 
phere, which  is  only  to  be  reached  within  the  periphery  of 
the  Lotos  Club.     [Laughter.] 

I  had  occasion  once  to  criticise  Mayor  Cooper's  predeces- 
sor on  the  ground  that  his  bread-basket  resembled  the 
municipal  treasury  ;  the  more  he  put  into  it,  the  less  good 
it  seemed  to  do.  [Laughter.]  I  believe  in  this  era  of  re- 
form we  have  reached  reform  in  that  respect.  [Renewed 
laughter.]  It  is  expected  bj^  every  good  citizen  in  this 
metropolis  that  its  Mayor  shall  have  the  fluency  of  Henry 
Clay,  the  solidity  of  Daniel  Webster,  the  firmness  of 
Andrew  Jackson  and  the  digestion  of  an  ostrich  [great 
laughter],  to  which  fulfilment  of  all  the  duties  that  belong 
to  the  office  the  Lotos  Club  Avelcomes  Mr.  Cooper. 
[Laughter.]  I  have  often  noticed  this  peculiarity  about 
mayors,  and  I  have  known  a  good  many  of  them — not  so 
many,  however,  as  Mayor  Ely,  whose  mature  recollection 
runs  back  to  about  forty  mayors.  I  have  observed  that 
they  think  a  great  deal  more  of  themselves  during  the  first 
month  of  their  office  than  they  do  in  the  last.  [Laughter.] 
The  only  exception  that  I  ever  met  to  this  rule  was  in  the 
case  of  the  late  lamented  Mayor  Havemeyer.  In  the  clos- 
ing days  of  his  administration  I  was  in  his  office  one  day. 
He  led  me  to  the  window  and  pointed  to  the  moving  crowds 
on  Broadway.  Said  he  :  "  Depew,  look  there.  There  go 
business  men,  capitalists,  men  of  influence  and  property. 
There  they  are  hurrying  on  to  provide  for  themselves,  their 
families  and  future,  and  paying  no  attention  to  political 
affairs.  Not  one  of  them  looks  over  to  this  office,  because 
they  know  that  the  old  Dutchman  is  here,  protecting  their 
lives  and  their  property  against  the  thieves  of  Tammany 
Hall  and  the  gamblers  of  the  Republican  party.  "  [Laugh- 
ter and  applause.] 

Now,  I  am  probably  more  competent  to  speak  in  this 
mixed  assembly  than  any  person  here.  I  served  the  Re- 
publicans for  many  years,  and  ran  for  Lieutenant-Governor  on 
the  Liberal  Democratic  ticket.  [Laughter.]  While  running 
for  Lieutenant-Governor,  I  remember  that  once  I  was  speak- 
ing at  Potsdam.  There  were  six  Democrats  in  the  town.  I 
was  told  that  there  was  one  man  in  the  town  who  had   read 


thp:  empirk  statk  333 

"  The  Day-Book  "  all  through  the  war,  and  believed  in  it  still, 
and  that  if  I  could  secure  him  I  could  get  the  solid  vote. 
During  my  speech  that  man  was  present.  When  I  got 
through,  he  came  to  me  and  said  :  "If  what  our  paper  has 
been  saying  of  you  for  the  last   ten  years  is   true,  you   are 

probably  the  d st   rascal  agoing    [laughter]  ;  but  if  you 

will  exercise  your  peculiar  talents  as  well  for  the  Demo- 
cratic party  as  you  have  for  your  Republicans,  I  will  vote  for 
you  with  my  whole  heart."  [Great  laughter.]  That  is  about 
the  only  town  in  the  State  in  which  I  got  the  solid  vote. 
[Renewed  laughter.]  Now  the  Lotos  Club  welcomes  Mayor 
Cooper  upon  his  entrance  upon  his  important  duties  with 
that  enthusiasm  and  encouragement  that  only  a  body  com- 
prising the  intellect  and  influence  of  this  Club  can  possibly 
bestow.  [Laughter.]  We  welcome  him  and  bid  him  good 
cheer,  in  common  with  all  our  fellow-citizens.  [Applause.] 
It  isa  common  thing  to  criticise,  but  it  has  almost  uniformly 
been  the  habit  of  all  parties  in  the  City  of  New  York  to 
put  forward  as  candidate  for  its  Chief  Magistrate  for  the 
suffrages  of  citizens,  men,  men  on  either  side  who  if  elected 
would  be  eminently  worthy  of  the  dignity  and  honor  to 
which  they  aspire.  The  late  contest  was  between  men  of 
high  intelligence  and  old  citizenship.  Both  candidates  were 
gentlemen  of  worth,  of  character,  virtue  and  independence. 
The  citizens  of  New  York  have  accorded  the  honor  to  the 
gentleman  who  is  our  guest  to-night.  It  is  a  worthy  honor, 
worthily  bestowed,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  office  will 
be  worthily  administered.     [Long-continued  applause.] 


THE  EMPIRE  STATE 

[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  the  seventy-fourth  atiiiiversary  ban- 
quet of  the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December 
22,  1879.  President  Daniel  A.  Appleton  was  in  the  chair,  and  intro- 
duced the  speaker  as  follows:  "Gentlemen,  we  cannot  forget  our 
loyalty  to  the  State  in  which  we  live,  and  our  next  regular  toast  is 
'  The  State  of  New  York  :  Our  voice  is  imperial.' — Henry  V.  This  toast 
will  be  responded  to  by  one  whom  we  are  always  pleased  to  hear — Mr. 
Chauncey  M.  Depew."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — It  has  been  my  lot 
from  a  time  whence  I   cannot  remember  to  respond  each 


334  CHAUNCEY  MITCHELL    DEPEW 

year  to  this  toast.  When  I  received  the  invitation  from  the 
committee,  its  originality  and  ingenuity  astonished  and  over- 
whehncd  me.  [Laughter.]  But  there  is  one  thing  the 
committee  took  into  consideration  when  they  invited  me  to 
this  platform.  This  is  a  Presidential  year,  and  it  becomes 
men  not  to  trust  themselves  talking  on  dangerous  topics. 
The  State  of  New  York  is  eminently  safe.  [Laughter.] 
Ever  since  the  present  able  and  distinguished  Governor  has 
held  his  place  I  have  been  called  upon  by  the  New  England 
Society  to  respond  for  him.  It  is  probably  due  to  that  ele- 
ment in  the  New  Englander  that  he  delights  in  provoking 
controversy.  The  Governor  is  a  Democrat,  and  I  am  a  Re- 
publican. Whatever  he  believes  in  I  detest ;  whatever  he 
admires  I  hate.  [Laughter.]  The  manner  in  which  this 
toast  is  received  leads  me  to  believe  that  in  the  New  Eng- 
land Society  his  administration  is  unanimously  approved. 
[Laughter.]  Governor  Robinson,  if  I  understand  correctly  his 
views,  would  rather  that  any  other  man  should  have  been 
elected  as  Chief  Magistrate  than  Mr.  John  Kelly.  Mr. 
Kelly,  if  I  interpret  aright  his  public  utterances,  would  pre- 
fer any  other  man  for  Governor  of  New  York  than  Lucius 
Robinson  [laughter],  and  therefore,  in  one  of  the  most 
heated  controversies  we  have  ever  had,  we  elected  a  Gov- 
ernor by  unanimous  consent  or  assent  in  Alonzo  B.  Cornell. 
[Cheers  and  laughter.]  Horace  Greeley  once  said  to  me,  as 
we  were  returning  from  a  State  convention  where  he  had 
been  a  candidate,  but  the  delegates  had  failed  to  nominate 
the  fittest  man  for  the  place  :  "  I  don't  see  why  any  man 
wants  to  be  Governor  of  the  State  of  New  York  [laughter], 
for  there  is  no  one  living  who  can  name  the  last  ten  Gov- 
ernors on  a  moment's  notice."  [Laughter.]  But  though 
there  have  been  Governors  and  Governors,  there  is,  when 
the  gubernatorial  ofifice  is  mentioned,  one  figure  that  strides 
down  the  centuries  before  all  the  rest ;  that  is  the  old  Dutch 
Governor  of  New  York,  with  his  wooden  leg — Peter  Stuy- 
vesant.  [Applause.]  There  have  been  heroines,  too,  who 
have  aroused  the  poetry  and  eloquence  of  all  times,  but 
none  who  have  about  them  the  substantial  aroma  of  the 
Dutch  heroine,  Anneke  Jans.     [Laughter.] 

It  is  within    the  memory  of  men  now  living  when   the 
\vhole  of  American  literature  was  dismissed  with  the  sneer  of 


THE    EMPIRE   STATE  -^35 

the  "Edinburgh  Review,"  "  Who  reads  an  American  book?" 
But  out  of  the  American  wilderness  a  broad  avenue  to  the 
highway  which  has  been  trod  by  the  genius  of  all  times  in 
its  march  to  fame  was  opened  by  Washington  Irving,  and 
in  his  footsteps  have  followed  the  men  who  are  read  of  all 
the  world,  and  who  will  receive  the  highest  tributes  in  all 
times— Longfellow,  and  Whittier,  and  Hawthorne  and 
Prescott.     [Applause.] 

New  York  is  not  only  imperial  in  all  those  material  results 
which  constitute  and  form  the  greatest  commonwealth  in 
this  constellation  of  commonwealths,  but  in  our  poHtical 
system  she  has  become  the  arbiter  of  our  national  destiny. 
As  goes  New  York  so  goes  the  Union,  and  her  voice  indi- 
cates that  the  next  President  will  be  a  man  with  New 
England  blood  in  his  veins  or  a  representative  of  New 
England  ideas.     [Applause.] 

And  for  the  gentleman  who  will  not  be  elected  I  have  a 
Yankee  story.  In  the  Berkshire  hills  there  was  a  funeral, 
and  as  they  gathered  in  the  little  parlor  there  came  the 
typical  New  England  female,  who  mingles  curiosity  with 
her  .sympathy,  and  as  she  glanced  around  the  darkened  room 
.she  said  to  the  bereaved  widow,  "  When  did  you  get  that 
new  eight-day  clock  ?  "  "  We  ain't  got  no  new  eight-day 
clock,"  was  the  reply.  "You  ain't?  What's  that  in  the 
corner  there  ?  "  "  Why  no,  that's  not  an  eight-day  clock, 
that's  the  deceased ;  we  stood  him  on  end,  to  make  room 
for  the  mourners."     [Great  laughter.] 

Up  to  within  fifty  years  ago  all  roads  in  New  England  led 
to  Boston;  but  within  the  last  fifty  years  every  byway  and 
highway  in  New  England  leads  to  New  York.  [Laughter.] 
New  York  has  become  the  capital  of  New  England,  and 
within  her  limits  are  more  Yankees  than  in  any  three  New 
England  States  combined.  The  boy  who  is  to-day  plough- 
ing the  stony  hillside  in  New  England,  who  is  boarding 
around  and  teaching  school,  and  who  is  to  be  the  future 
merchant-prince  or  great  lavv}er,  or  wise  statesman,  looks 
not  now  to  Boston,  but  to  New  York,  as  the  El  Dorado  of 
his  hopes.  [Applause.]  And  how  generously,  sons  of 
New  England,  have  we  treated  you  ?  We  have  put  you  in 
the  best  ofifices  ;  we  have  made  you  our  merchant-princes. 
Where  is  the  city  or  village  in  our  State  where  you  do  not 


336  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

own  the  best  houses,  run  the  largest  manufactories,  and  con- 
trol the  principal  industries  ?  We  have  several  times  made 
one  of  your  number  Governor  of  the  State,  and  we  have 
placed  you  in  positions  where  you  honor  us  while  w^e  honor 
you.  [Applause.]  New  York's  choice  in  the  National 
Cabinet  is  the  distinguished  Secretary  of  State,  whose  pure 
Yankee  blood  renders  him  none  the  less  a  most  fit  and  most 
eminent  representative  of  the  Empire  State.      [Cheers.] 

But  while  we  have  done  our  best  to  satisfy  the  Yankee, 
there  is  one  thing  we  have  never  been  able  to  do.  We  can 
meet  his  ambition  and  fill  his  purse,  but  we  never  can 
satisfy  his  stomach.  [Laughter.]  When  the  President 
stated  to-night  that  Plymouth  Rock  celebrated  this  anni- 
versary on  the  2 1st,  while  we  here  did  so  on  the  22d,  he  did 
not  state  the  true  reason.  It  is  not  as  he  said,  a  dispute 
about  dates.  The  pork  and  beans  of  Plymouth  are  insufifi- 
cient  for  the  cravings  of  the  Yankee  appetite,  and  they 
chose  the  2ist,  in  order  that,  by  the  night  train,  they  may 
get  to  New  York  on  the  22d,  to  have  once  a  year  a  square 
meal.  [Laughter.]  From  1620  down  to  the  opening  of 
New  York  to  their  settlement,  a  constantly  increasing  void 
was  growing  inside  the  Yankee  diaphragm,  and  even  now 
the  native  and  imported  Yankee  finds  the  best-appointed 
restaurant  in  the  world  insufficient  for  his  wants  ;  and  he 
has  migrated  to  this  house,  that  he  may  annually  have  the 
sensation  of  suf^ciency  in  the  largest  hotel  in  the  United 
States.     [Laughter.] 

My  friend,  Mr.  Curtis,  has  eloquently  stated,  in  the  begin- 
ning of  his  address,  the  Dutchman's  idea  of  the  old  Puritan. 
He  has  stated,  at  the  close  of  his  address,  the  modern 
opinion  of  the  old  Puritan.  He  was  an  uncomfortable  man 
to  live  with,  but  two  hundred  years  off  a  grand  historic 
figure.  If  any  one  of  you,  gentlemen,  was  compelled  to 
leave  this  festive  board,  and  go  back  two  hundred  years 
and  live  with  your  ancestor  of  that  day,  eat  his  fare,  drink 
his  drink,  and  listen  to  his  talk,  what  a  time  would  be  there, 
my  countrymen !  [Laughter.]  Before  the  Puritan  was 
fitted  to  accomplish  the  work  he  did,  with  all  the  great 
opportunities  that  were  in  him,  it  was  necessary  that  he 
should  spend  two  years  in  Leyden  and  learn  from  the  Dutch 
the  important   lesson    of  religious  toleration,  and  the  other 


THK    EMPIRE    STATE  337 

fundamental  lesson,  that  a  common-school  education  lies  at 
the  foundation  of  all  civil  and  religious  liberty.  |  Applause.] 
If  the  Dutchman  had  conquered  Boston,  it  would  have  been 
a  misfortune  to  this  land,  and  to  the  world.  It  would  have 
been  like  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  wrestling  with  an  electric 
battery. 

But  when  the  Yankee  conquered  New  York,  his  union 
with  the  Dutch  formed  those  sterling  elements  which  have 
made  the  Republic  what  it  is.  [Applause.]  Yankee  ideas 
prevailed  in  this  land  in  the  grandest  contest  in  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States  which  has  ever  taken  place,  or  ever 
will  ;  in  the  victory  of  Nationalism  over  Sectionalism  by  the 
ponderous  eloquence  of  that  great  defender  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, Daniel  Webster.  [Applause.]  And  when,  failing  in 
the  forum.  Sectionalism  took  the  field,  Yankee  ideas  con- 
quered again  in  that  historic  meeting  when  Lee  gave  up  his 
sword  to  Grant.  [Applause.]  And  when,  in  the  disturb- 
ance of  credit  and  industry  which  followed,  the  twin  heresies 
Expansion  and  Repudiation  stalked  abroad,  Yankee  ideas 
conquered  again  in  the  policy  of  our  distinguished  guest, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  [Applause.]  So  great  a 
triumph  has  never  been  won  by  any  financial  officer  of  the 
government  before,  as  in  the  funding  of  our  national  debt 
at  four  per  cent.,  and  the  restoration  of  the  national  credit, 
which  has  given  an  impulse  to  our  prosperity  and  industry 
that  can  neither  be  stayed  nor  stopped.     [Applause.] 

When  Henry  Hudson  sailed  up  the  great  harbor  of  New 
York,  and  saw  with  prophetic  vision  its  magnificent  oppor- 
tunities, he  could  only  emphasize  his  thought,  with  true 
Dutch  significance,  in  one  sentence — "  See  here!  "  When 
the  Yankee  came  and  settled  in  New  York,  he  emphasized 
his  coming  with  another  sentence — "  Sit  here  !  " — and  he  sat 
down  upon  the  Dutchman  with  such  force  that  he  squeezed 
him  out  of  his  cabbage-patch,  and  upon  it  he  built  his  ware- 
house and  his  residence.  [Applause.]  He  found  this  city 
laid  out  in  a  beautiful  labyrinth  of  cowpatches,  with  the 
inhabitants  and  the  houses  all  standing  with  their  gable- 
ends  to  the  street,  and  he  turned  them  all  to  the  avenue, 
and  made  New  York  a  parallelogram  of  palaces  ;  and  he  has 
multiplied  to  such  an  extent  that  now  he  fills  every  nook 
of  our  great  State,  and  we  recognize  here  to-night  that,  with 
22 


33^  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

no  tariff,  and  free  trade  between  New  England  and  New 
York,  the  native  specimen  is  an  improvement  upon  the  im- 
ported article.  [Laughter.]  Gentlemen,  I  beg  leave  to 
say,  as  a  native  New  Yorker  of  many  generations,  that  by 
the  influence,  the  hospitality,  the  liberal  spirit,  and  the  cos- 
mopolitan influences  of  this  great  State,  from  the  unlovable 
Puritan  of  two  hundred  years  ago  you  have  become  the 
most  agreeable  and  companionable  of  men.     [Cheers.] 

New  York  to-day,  the  Empire  State  of  all  the  great 
States  of  the  Commonwealth,  brings  in  through  her  grand 
avenue  to  the  sea  eighty  per  cent,  of  all  the  imports,  and  sends 
forth  a  majority  of  all  the  exports,  of  the  Republic.  She  col- 
lects and  pays  four-fifths  of  the  taxes  which  carry  on  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  country.  In  the  close  competition  to  secure 
the  great  Western  commerce  which  is  to-day  feeding  the  world 
and  seeking  an  outlet  along  three  thousand  miles  of  coast,  she 
holds  by  her  commercial  prestige  and  enterprise  more  than 
all  the  ports  from  New  Orleans  to  Portland  combined.  Let 
us,  whether  native  or  adopted  New  Yorkers,  be  true  to  the 
past,  to  the  present,  to  the  future,  of  this  commercial  and 
financial  metropolis.  Let  us  enlarge  our  terminal  facilities 
and  bring  the  rail  and  the  steamship  close  together.  Let 
us  do  away  with  the  burdens  that  make  New  York  the 
dearest,  and  make  her  the  cheapest,  port  on  the  continent  ; 
and  let  us  impress  our  commercial  ideas  upon  the  national 
legislature,  so  that  the  navigation  laws,  which  have  driven 
the  merchant  marine  of  the  Republic  from  the  seas,  shall  be 
repealed,  and  the  breezes  of  every  clime  shall  unfurl,  and 
the  waves  of  every  sea  reflect,  the  flag  of  the  Republic. 
[  Loud  cheers.] 


OUR  ENGLISH  VISITORS 

[Speech  of  Chauncej'  M.  Depew  at  a  banquet  given  by  the  Lotos 
Club,  New  York,  January  lo,  1885,  in  honor  of  George  Augustus  Sala, 
who  was  stopping  in  New  York,  on  his  way  to  a  lecturing  tour  through 
Australia.  Whitelaw  Reid,  President  of  the  Society,  occupied  the  chair. 
He  introduced  Mr.  Depew  as  the  vanquished,  but  not  yet  extinguished 
Senator.  ] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen: — Nothing  pleases 
and   compliments   me  more  than  to  be  called  upon  on  this 


OUR   ENGLISH    VISITOKS  339 

occasion  [laughter],  to  speak  by  my  fellow  extinct  Senator. 
[Laughter.]  When  in  Dublin,  last  summer,  an  Irish  orator 
was  dilating  upon  an  opponent  who  he  said  possessed  all 
the  characteristics  of  an  extinct  volcano,  one  of  the  audience 
yelled  out :  "  Poor  cratur."     [Laughter.] 

As  this  occasion  seems  to  be  turned  somewhat  from  a 
social  to  a  political  discussion  [laughter],  it  pleases  me  to 
find  that  the  representative  newspaper  of  America,  which 
has  been  for  months  my  personal  organ  [laughter],  is  here 
to-night  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Pulitzer.  [Laughter.]  The 
public  may  not  understand  this  thing,  but  Pulitzer  and  I  do 
[laughter],  and  I  am  always  pleased  that  while  Mr.  Reid 
represents  the  Blaine  element,  which  w^ould  have  succeeded 
but  for  certain  unforeseen  accidents  [applause]  ;  and  Mr. 
Pulitzer,  both  in  his  Congressional  record  and  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  a  party  newspaper  represents  the  party  which 
did  not  succeed — that  the  secretary  supplemented  the  full 
round  of  the  political  horizon  by  reading  the  letters  of  those 
most  distinguished  Mugwumps,  George  William  Curtis 
and  Henry  Ward  Beecher.  [Laughter  and  applause.] 
And  after  having  seen  and  heard  our  guest  of  to-night  in  his 
reply  to  the  president,  no  one  can  doubt  where  his  sym- 
pathies are. 

I  have  noticed  that  after  some  of  the  jocose  remarks  of 
the  eminent  wits  who  have  preceded  me,  they  have  in- 
troduced some  of  the  most  witty  parts  of  their  observations 
by  saying:  "Now,  to  be  serious."  [Laughter.]  I  have 
thought,  as  I  have  sat  here  at  this  table  to-night,  what  a  con- 
gregation it  would  be  if  all  the  eminent  men  who  have 
been  received  by  the  Lotos  Club  were  gathered  in  one 
room.  It  would  be  an  intellectual  kaleidoscope  that  at 
every  turn  would  illustrate  and  present  the  best  form  of 
genius.      [Applause.] 

We  have  received  here  these  men  who  in  letters,  in  arms, 
and  in  statesmanship  have  illustrated  all  that  is  greatest  and 
grandest  of  our  time  in  this  and  other  countries ;  at  the 
same  time  by  sundry  accidents  which  happen  in  clubs  like 
this,  as  well  as  in  politics,  we  have  received  gentlemen  who 
have  culminated  at  this  reception  and  never  been  heard  of 
afterward.  [Laughter.]  And  the  receptions  which  have 
marked  our  history  would  illustrate  the  manner  in  which 


340  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL   DEPEW 

in  one  sense  the  country  which  our  guest  represents  sought 
to  capture  this  great  and  growing  empire.  When  that 
gentleman  whom  Macaulay  alludes  to  as  sitting  upon  the 
broken  arch  of  London  Bridge,  has  become  tired  of  these 
reflections  and  come  over  here  for  grander  and  larger  ones, 
swinging  upon  the  broken  string  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge, 
to  muse  upon  what  has  been  and  might  be,  his  thoughts 
will  recur  to  the  efforts  continuously  made  and  partly  suc- 
cessful of  the  mother  country  to  capture  and  control  her 
wayward  child  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  She  began  at 
the  beginning  by  attempting  to  wallop  us,  and  made  that 
discovery  which  many  a  parent  has  made  before,  when  the 
child  has  gone  forth  into  the  world  and  become  independent 
and  self-reliant,  that  he  returns,  not  a  boy,  but  a  full-grown 
man.  Since  that  time  for  a  hundred  years,  by  diplomacy 
and  by  other  art, England  has  endeavored  to  make  this  great 
empire  the  tail  of  the  British  kite.  [Laughter.]  Now,  we 
have  been  able  to  resist  her  armies  and  her  navies,  but  she 
has  captured  us  in  a  sense,  that  she  does  all  our  carrying- 
trade,  and  tolls  us  for  the  whole  of  the  profit.  She  has 
captured  us  in  a  sense  that  our  best  society  speaks  with  a 
dialect  of  the  noble  language  which  is  called  English 
[laughter]  ;  but  while  we  could  resist  her  armies  and  her 
navies,  while  we  could  withstand  the  metrical  and  musical 
assaults  of  her  Sullivans  and  her  Gilberts  [laughter],  there 
is  a  point  where  we  feel  that  there  is  a  necessity  of  not 
surrendering — that  is  when  the  British  lecturer  appears. 
[Laughter.] 

A  modern  Briton,  when  he  feels  that  he  has  a  mission  to 
reveal  to  the  world,  goes  out,  not  to  the  country  which 
needs  it  most,  his  own  [laughter],  but  comes  over  here  and 
in  the  spirit  of  the  purest  philanthropy  lets  us  have  it  at 
two  hundred  dollars  a  night.  [Applause  and  laughter.] 
And  that  is  the  reason  why  Mr.  Sala,  notwithstanding  his 
modest  declaimer  that  he  is  a  traveller  sojourning  through 
the  land,  goes  to  San  Fransisco  by  way  of  Portland  and 
Boston.  [Laughter.]  Now,  then,  the  present  commercial 
difficulties  in  this  country — lack  of  prosperity,  the  closing 
of  the  mills  and  all  that  which  we  are  accustomed  to  ascribe 
to  the  fact  that  a  Democratic  Administration  has  come  into 
power,  are  due  to  this  horde  of  English  lecturers.     [Laugh- 


OUR    ENCil.Isn    VISITORS  3_j  I 

ter.  ]  But  like  the  Chinaman  who  comes  here,  to  accumu- 
late and  not  to  stay,  he  carries  away  with  him  all  our  sur- 
plus and  leaves  nothing  but  ideas.     (  Laughtcr.J 

I  well  remember,  as  you  do,  Mr.  President,  when  this 
system  of  insidious  English  attack  upon  our  institutions 
was  begun.  Thackeray,  that  grand-hearted  and  genial  critic, 
began  it ;  Dickens,  with  his  magnificent  dramatic  talent, 
continued  it,  and  then  what  have  we  suffered  since!  Look 
at  Sergeant  Ballantync,  who  brought  to  us  jokes  so  old 
tliat  they  fall  within  the  provisions  of  the  penal  act  [laugh- 
ter], and  carried  away  stories  which  have  since  convulsed 
the  British  Empire.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  Look  at 
Herbert  Spencer,  the  dyspeptic,  lean,  hungry,  sleepless,  ema- 
ciated, prostrated  with  nervous  prostration  [laughter]  ;  he 
appeared  before  us  looking  for  all  the  world  like  Pickwick 
gone  to  seed,  and  lectured  us  upon  overwork.  [Laughter.] 
Look  at  Matthew  Arnold,  that  apostle  of  light  and  sunshine, 
who  came  here  and  had  an  experience  wdiich  might  excite 
the  compassion  of  all.  He  found  himself  in  that  region 
from  which  Mr.  Pulitzer  hails,  in  the  midst  of  what  is  termed 
a  lecture  corpse  :  The  lecture  manager  made  this  introduc- 
tory speech  :  "  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  next  week  we  shall 
have  here  those  beautiful  singers,  the  Johnson  sisters  ;  two 
weeks  from  to-night  Professor  Force-Wind  will  give  us  mag- 
nificent views  of  Europe  upon  the  magic  lantern  ;  and  to- 
night I  have  the  pleasure  of  introducing  to  you  that  dis- 
tinguished philosopher  who  has  passed  most  of  his  life  in 
Lidia,  Matthew  Arnold,  who  is  the  author  of  that  great  poem 
"  The  Light  of  Asia."     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

Well  now  then,  gentlemen,  whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
previous  representatives  of  the  British  Empire,  we,  repre- 
senting the  whole  American  people,  welcome  here  to-night 
our  guest,  George  Augustus  Sala.  [Applause.]  We  wel- 
come him,  because  he  is,  of  all  Englishmen,  the  most  like  an 
American.  He  writes  editorials  v/hich  fire  people  like  the 
sound  of  a  trumpet  ;  he  writes  books  which  a  man  may  take 
home  to  his  friends  and  read  to  his  famil)'  with  perfect  sat- 
isfaction, and  without  the  fear  of  a  blush.  Me  is  the  best 
after-dinner  speaker  among  the  English  people,  and  equal  to 
most  of  our  American  after-dinner  speakers.  [  Laughter.] 
I  see   that  in  that  interview  in  which   he  sa\'s  tliat  he  has 


342  CHAUNCKY  mitchp:ll  depp:w 

come  here  to  make  money — 1  was  glad  to  see  he  refuted 
the  statement  that  among  his  lectures  was  one  upon  "Cul- 
ture, Costumes,  and  Cookery."  I  want  him  to  understand, 
as  he  traverses  this  continent  by  w^ay  of  Boston  and  Portland 
to  San  Francisco,  that  the  lecture-going  and  intelligent  peo- 
ple of  this  country  will  not  stand  alliteration.  [Laughter 
and  applause.]  A  great  social,  religious  and  moral  and  po- 
litical revolution  has  been  wrought  in  this  Republic  by 
Rome,  Rheumatism  and  Rebellion.      [  Loud   laughter.] 

While  we  were  opposed  for  twenty  years  to  Mr.  Sala, 
and  did  not  see  him  because  he  said  the  South  would  ulti- 
mately succeed  in  conquering  this  country,  we  welcome  him 
here  to-night,  because  we  entertained  then  a  prophet  un- 
awares. [Laughter.]  Now,  then,  I  feel  always  a  degree  of 
hesitancy  and  timidity  in  criticising  to  any  extent,  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Third  Estate,  and  I  understand  from 
this  same  interview  that  our  guest  to-night  has  written 
seven  thousand  leading  articles,  while  he  claims  that  he  is 
the  possessor  beyond  all  other  men  of  the  largest  catholicity 
of  opinion  and  of  the  greatest  charity  for  the  opinions  of 
other  men.  I  have  always  found  that  in  his  views  and  in 
his  view  of  other  people's  views,  he  is  very  much  like  the 
sentiment  entertained  by  good  old  Dean  Richmond  in  the 
early  history  of  the  New  York  Central  Railroad — by  the 
waj^  the  best  railroad  in  this  country  [laughter],  a  man 
must  sometimes  have  the  courage  of  his  convictions. 
[Laughter.]  Dean  Richmond  called  before  him  at  one  time 
the  superintendent  of  the  Car  Department  and  said  to  him  : 
"  Sir,  I  want  you  to  understand  that  this  organization  allows 
absolute  liberty  to  the  head  of  every  department  to  do  as  he 
pleases  in  his  own  department,  responsible  only  for  the  re- 
sults, and  you  can  paint  your  cars  any  blank  color  you  like, 
provided  you  paint  them  red."     [Laughter.] 

But,  gentlemen,  in  a  broader  and  a  larger  sense  we  wel- 
come Mr.  Sala  here  to-night  ;  it  is  not  so  much  because  he 
is  an  eminent  journalist,  as  he  is  ;  not  so  much  because  he 
is  an  eminent  lecturer,  as  he  is  ;  but  because  America  is  rec- 
ognizing the  fact  which  she  needs  to  recognize  quite  as 
much  as  any  country  in  the  world,  that  he  is  a  citizen  of  the 
world.  [Applause.]  Steam  and  electricity  have  broken 
down  barriers  which   in   former  times   made  provincialism, 


IRELAND  343 

patriotism  ;  and  every  man  no  mattei"  whether  he  be  a  busi- 
ness  man,  whether  he  be  a  journaHst,  whether  he  be  a  lec- 
turer, whether  he  be  a  statesman,  is  forced  to  reco^Miizethat 
steam  and  electricity  bring  all  the  world  in  harmony  to- 
gether. 

What  concerns  civilization,  what  concerns  the  progress, 
what  concerns  the  policy,  what  concerns  the  statesmanship, 
what  concerns  the  legislation  of  any  country,  concerns 
equally  the  interests  of  all  other  countries  on  the  face  of 
globe.  [Applause.]  Upon  the  banks  of  the  Merrimac, 
upon  the  banks  of  the  Ohio,  and  the  Mississippi,  upon  the 
banks  of  the  great  northern  lakes,  a  million  hands  may  be  idle, 
dependent  upon  the  fact  whether  the  Suez  Canal  is  open, 
dependent  upon  the  fact  whether  the  Isthmus  is  pierced, 
dependent  upon  the  fact  whether  the  Congo  is  made  a  mart 
for  the  commerce  of  the  world.  And  in  a  rush  which  is  not 
commercial  but  literary  we  welcome  Sala  here  to-night,  be- 
cause, though  a  London  journaHst,  he  is  serving  the  world, 
concentrating  there  his  ideas,  putting  them  in  such  shape 
that  in  England,  in  America,  in  Australia,  in  all  quarters  of 
the  civilized  world  they  are  recognized  as  ideas  of  value 
and  interest  to  all  men.      [Loud   and  continued  applause.] 


IRELAND 


[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  a  complimentary  dinner  given  to 
Justin  McCarthy  by  the  Irish  Parliamentary  Fund  Association  at  New 
York,  October  2,  1886.  Judge  Edward  Browne  presided.  The  response 
to  the  toast,  "  Ireland,"  was  assigned  to  Mr.  Depew.  The  following 
lines  by  John  Boyle  O'Reilly  were  selected  for  the  motto  : — 

"  God  scatters  her  sons  like  seed  on  the  lea, 

And  they  root  where  they  fall,  be  it  mountain  or  furrow  ; 
They  come  to  remain  and  remember  ;  and  she 

In  their  growth  will  rejoice  in  a  blissful  to-morrow."] 

Mr.  Chairman  : — The  first  of  my  ancestors  reached  this 
country  about  250  years  ago.  Many  of  them  came  after- 
ward. [Great  laughter.]  The  result  is  I  am  selected  to 
stand  in  the  presence  of  every  nationality  as  one  of  Ameri- 
can blood.  [Renewed  laughter.]  One  of  my  ancestors  left 
Ireland  over   125  years  ago,  and  I  left  it  three  weeks  ago. 


344  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL   DEPEW 

[Laughter  and  applause.]  He  never  returned,  but  I  expect 
to  take  my  seat  in  the  strangers'  gallery  of  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment. [A  voice :  "  There  will  be  no  strangers'  gallery  in 
the  Irish  Parliament."]  Unless  I  should  be  elected  a  mem- 
ber from  County  Cork.      [Great  laughter  and  applause.] 

It  affords  mc  unusual  pleasure  to  begin  the  festive  exer- 
cises of  the  winter  by  joining  in  a  welcome  to  our  dis- 
tinguished guest  to-night.  In  his  versatility,  his  marvellous 
capacity  to  move  in  many  directions,  and  all  acceptable  to 
himself  and  his  friends,  he  seems  to  me  to  be  more  than  any 
man  on  the  other  side  peculiarly  an  American.  [Laughter.] 
He  has  impressed  himself  upon  the  American  people  as  a 
literary  man  by  possessing  that  facility  which  alone  secures 
from  them  a  reading.  In  his  romances  he  seems  to  be  re- 
citing history,  and  his  histories  are  romances.  [Great 
laughter.]  But  we  welcome  him  to-night,  not  because  he 
has  touched  the  chord  which  is  responded  to  by  every  cul- 
tivated American — and  every  American  is  cultivated  [laugh- 
ter and  applause] — but  because  he  represents  a  principle 
with  which  every  American  agrees  with  him.  [Applause.] 
In  England,  during  the  recent  canvass  and  elections,  a  Tory 
member  of  Parliament  said  to  me :  "  Does  anybody  in 
x\merica  take  any  interest  in  the  question  which  Mr.  Glad- 
stone has  precipitated  upon  us  except  the  Irish?"  I  said 
to  him  :  "  There  are  no  cross-roads  in  the  United  States 
where  the  question  is  not  watched  with  the  same  eagerness 
with  which  we  watch  a  Presidential  canvass  and  election. 
There  is  no  cross-roads  hamlet,  village  or  city  in  America 
where  the  Irish  question  is  not  talked  about  day  by  day, 
and  the  only  difference  between  an  ordinary  Presidential 
election  with  us  and  this  election  is,  that  our  voices  and  our 
votes  are  all  on  one  side."  [Long-continued  applause.] 
"  Well,"  he  said,  "  that  is  because  you  are  not  informed." 
I  said  to  him  :  "  It  is  because  we  are  educated  on  that 
question,  and  England  proper  is  not."  The  principle  of 
Home  Rule  starts  from  the  town  meeting,  starts  from 
the  village  caucus,  starts  from  the  ward  gathering,  reaches 
the  County  Supervisors,  stops  at  the  State  Legislature,  and 
delegates  imperial  power  only  to  Congress.  [Great  ap- 
plause.] The  whole  genius  and  spirit  of  American  liberty 
is   Home   Rule  in  the   locality  where  it   best  understands 


irp:land  345 

what  it  needs,  and  it  is  only  on  general  matters  that  the 
general  government  controls.     [Applause.] 

With  all  our  English-speaking  race,  whatever  may  be  its 
origin  or  its  commingling  with  other  races,  there  is  at  the 
bottom  a  savage  spirit,  a  brutal  spirit,  by  which  we  seek  to 
gain  what  is  necessary  to  our  power  or  our  pelf  by  might, 
and  to  hold  it  no  matter  what  may  be  the  right.  Under 
the  impetus  of  that  spirit,  the  English-speaking  race  have 
trodden  upon  rights  and  liberties  and  secured  privileges 
until  they  virtually  circle  and  control  the  globe.  We  our- 
selves, in  our  own  country,  are  no  strangers  to  the  spirit  in 
the  manner  in  which  for  a  century  we  trampled  upon  the 
rights  of  the  slave,  and  in  the  manner  in  which  we  to-day 
trample  upon  the  rights  of  the  Indian,  [Applause.]  But, 
thank  God  !  in  the  evolution  of  the  moral  principle  of  human 
nature,  in  the  enlightenment  which  belongs  to  the  race  of 
which  we  are  so  proud,  in  the  exercise  and  in  the  power  of 
the  Church  within  and  without,  there  has  grown  up  in  our 
race  a  conscience  to  which  an  appeal  can  be  successfully 
made.  [Applause.]  It  is  the  appeal  to  that  conscience 
which  came  within  seventy-five  thousand  votes  of  carrying 
the  election  for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland.  The  middle-class 
Englishman,  whatever  may  be  the  prejudices  against  him 
in  Ireland  and  in  this  country,  is  a  hard-hearted,  but  con- 
scientious, moral,  and  family-loving  man.  [Applause.]  All 
he  needs  is  to  be  educated  to  a  realization  of  what  is  right 
and  what  is  wrong,  and  he  will  rise  to  the  emergency. 
[Applause.]  He  had  followed  Gladstone  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  and  when  Gladstone  said  this  is  the  right  road, 
believing  it  not  to  be  the  right,  he  followed  Gladstone. 
[Applause.]  When  Gladstone  and  those  who  are  behind 
him  have  educated  him,  within  two  years  from  to-night  he 
will  turn  around  and  say  to  the  Tory  government,  to  Union- 
Liberal  government,  to  Liberal  government,  to  Radical 
government :  "  Justice  to  Ireland,  or  you  cannot  stay  in 
power."     [Great  applause.] 

Now,  I  thought  I  would  talk  to  these  people.  The 
Yankee  doesn't  amount  to  much  unless  he  asks  questions — 
and  I  am  a  Yankee — that  is,  an  Irish  Yankee.  I  said  to  a 
Tory  of  some  note  :  "  Why  do  you  oppose  Mr.  Gladstone's 
bill?"     "Why,"  said  he,  "  because  it  would   confiscate,  by 


346  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

the  Irish  Parliament,  every  bit  of  property  there  is  in  Ire- 
land,  and  the  Protestant  minority  would  be  crushed  out  and 
driven  from  the  face  of  the  earth."  I  said  to  the  Union- 
Liberal:  "  Why  do  you  oppose  Home  Rule?"  He  said: 
•'  Because  it  would  lead  to  the  disruption  of  the  British 
Empire — the  same  question  you  had  to  contend  with  in 
America."  I  said  to  the  English  manufacturer :  "  Why 
don't  you  help  Ireland  by  taking  over  your  capital  and  de- 
veloping her  capacities  ?  "  He  said  :  "  Because  the  beggars 
won't  work,"  I  said  to  the  English  squire,  who  is  alive  to- 
day, but  who  is  simply  the  mummied  representative  of  his 
ancestors  of  the  fourteenth  century  :  "  Why  are  you 
opposed  to  Gladstone  and  Home  Rule  for  Ireland?" 
"  Why,"  said  he,  "  because  the  Irish  are  children  and  must 
have  a  firm  hand  to  govern  them." 

Well,  gentlemen,  all  those  questions  are  answered  suc- 
cessfully either  in  America  or  Ireland  to-day.  The  fact  that 
among  the  noblest,  the  most  brilliant,  the  most  magnificent 
contributions  to  the  forces  of  human  liberty,  not  only  in 
Ireland  but  in  the  world,  which  have  been  given  in  the  last 
century,  have  come  from  the  Protestant  minority  in  Ireland, 
answers  the  question  of  Irish  bigotry.  Through  that  an- 
cestor who  left  Ireland  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  ago, 
I  come  from  that  same  Presbyterian  stock  which  is  repre- 
sented to-day  by  Parnell,  and  which  dared  to  take  its  chances 
with  Home  Rule  among  its  fellow-citizens.  What  have  the 
Irishmen  in  this  country  done?  Whenever  they  are  freed 
from  the  distressing  and  oppressing  influences  which  have 
borne  them  down  for  centuries  in  their  country,  they  do 
work.  They  have  built  our  great  public  works ;  they  have 
constructed  our  vast  system  of  railways  ;  they  have  done 
more  than  that ;  they  have  risen  to  places  of  power  and 
eminence  in  every  walk  of  industry  and  in  every  avenue 
which  is  open  to  brains  and  to  pluck.  The  only  complaint 
we  have  against  them  is,  that  they  show  too  much  genius 
for  government  and  get  all  the  ofifices.  I  have  some  ambi- 
tions myself,  and  I  am  for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland,  because  I 
want  these  fellows  to  go  back  to  give  me  a  chance. 

I  read  in  one  of  the  leading  papers  this  morning — I  shall 
not  state  which  for  fear  of  exciting  an  irruption  here  on 
this     platform,    but    it    was    the    leading    paper — that    the 


IKKLAXD  3^17 

Prime  Minister  of  Austria  [Count  Taaffc],  who  was  a 
member  of  the  Irish  Peerage,  under  some  name  which  I 
now  forget,  had  been  engaged  through  his  agent  in  evicting 
some  hundreds  of  his  tenants.  It  seemed  to  me  to  preacli 
the  most  pregnant  lesson  of  Irish  difficulty  and  Irish  relief. 
The  Prime  Minister  of  Austria,  as  all  the  world  knows,  is  a 
m;ui  of  pre-eminent  ability,  of  extraordinary  power  in  the 
management  of  international  questions,  of  profound  and 
magnificent  patriotism — to  Austria.  But  engrossed  as  he  is 
in  the  great  question  of  how  the  peace  of  Europe  is  to  be 
preserved  with  the  position  of  Russia  on  one  hand  and 
Germany  on  the  other,  how  is  he  to  perform  his  part  as  an 
Irish  citizen  toward  the  people  who  are  dependent  upon 
him  for  support  or  encouragement,  for  that  sympathy 
which  should  flow  between  him  who  holds  the  land,  and 
him  wlio  tills  it  for  a  price  ?  The  world  has  come  to 
recognize  that  property  has  its  obligations  as  well  as 
labor.  The  world  has  come  to  recognize  that  he  who  has, 
if  he  would  enjoy,  must  reciprocate  with  those  who  have 
not,  and  with  those  who  are  dependent  upon  him.  But 
as  all  wealth  springs  from  the  earth,  and  as  all  national 
prosperity  comes  from  the  soil,  if  there  is  in  any  country 
— as  thank  God  there  is  not  in  ours — a  system  by  which  the 
tenant's  title  goes  down  from  generation  to  generation, 
unless  the  lord  is  there  in  his  castle,  so  that  between  the 
castle  and  the  cottage  there  is  an  indissoluble  tie,  in  sickness 
and  in  health,  in  poverty  and  prosperity,  each  sympathizing 
with  the  other's  woes,  each  sharing  the  other's  joys — 
he  has  no  place  in  that  land,  and  the  law  should  say  to  him, 
not :  "  We  wall  strip  you  of  your  possessions  without  price  ;  " 
but  "  with  a  price  that  is  fair,  we  will  give  them  to  the  tillers 
of  the  soil." 

I  was  the  other  day — three  weeks  ago — in  an  Irish  city  ; 
and  as  I  was  passing  along  the  street,  I  saw  on  the  lintel  of 
a  door  the  emblems  of  mourning.  There  came  out  two 
solemn-looking  persons  whom  I  judged  from  their  conversa- 
tion to  be  the  doctor  and  his  assistant.  They  walked  along 
seeming  to  feel  very  bad  over  the  misfortune  that  had 
befallen  the  family  or  the  falling  off  of  their  revenues,  but 
when  they  reached  the  opposite  corner  of  the  street,  they 
turned,  and  one  said  to  the  other:    "  Mr.  O'Flyn,  we  did  the 


348  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

best  we  could."  "Yes,"  says  he,  "  Mr.  O'Brien,  and  it  was 
a  melancholy  pleasure."  Now  I  have  attended  a  great  many 
funerals  in  my  life  ;  I  expect  to  attend  a  grea':  many  more  ; 
and  there  are  many  obsequies  to  which  I  go  which  afford 
me  a  melancholy  pleasure.  I  feel  melancholy  in  outward 
aspect  out  of  respect  to  my  surroundings,  and  have  great 
pleasure  in  the  event ;  and  the  funeral  of  the  passion  and 
the  prejudice  of  England,  which  for  ages  have  cursed  Ire- 
land, I  shall  attend  with  a  melancholy  pleasure. 

The  difficulty  about  Ireland  and  the  United  States  is,  that 
while  the  Americans  have  talked — as  wc  all  have  to  talk 
upon  the  stump  and  platform,  some  of  us  for  votes,  and  some 
of  us  because  we  feel  it,  about  the  rights  and  wrongs  of 
Ireland — the  difficulty  with  us  has  always  been  that  we  did 
not  know  what  Irishmen  wanted.  We  have  reached  an  age 
when  sentiment  is  gone.  We  are  no  longer  a  sentimental 
people.  We  have  come  to  a  period  when  passion  can  no 
longer  be  torn  to  tatters,  unless  there  is  a  foundation  for  the 
cloth.  When  we  believe  a  people  to  be  suffering  from 
tyranny  and  injustice,  then  we  can  be  full  of  sentiment  in 
our  sympathies,  and  intensely  practical  in  our  assistance. 
In  the  divided  councils  of  the  past  we  could  not  learn  what 
the  Irish  wanted  for  Ireland,  but  the  full  lesson  has  been 
taught  us  by  the  same  great  leader  who  has  consolidated  the 
opinions  and  the  purposes  of  his  countrymen — Charles 
Stewart  Parnell. 

I  doubt  if  the  justice  and  strength  of  Mr.  Parnell's  position 
would  have  been  so  thoroughly  understood,  and  so  unani- 
mously approved,  by  the  American  people,  except  for  the 
conversion  and  resistless  advocacy  of  an  English  statesman 
who  has  for  years  held  the  first  place  in  our  admiration  and 
respect.  Americans  recognize  genius  everywhere,  and 
neither  race  nor  nationality  is  a  barrier  to  their  appreciation 
and  applause.  Beyond  all  other  men  in  the  Old  World,  one 
luiglishman  of  supreme  ability,  of  marvellous  eloquence,  and 
varied  acquirements,  has  fired  their  imaginations  and  en' 
thusiasm — William  E.  Gladstone. 

During  the  fifty  years  he  has  been  in  public  life,  there 
have  been  other  English  statesmen  as  accomplished  and 
eminent  in  many  departments  of  activity  and  thought; 
many  whose  home  and  foreign  policies  have  received  equal, 


THE    NEW    NETHERLANDERS  349 

if  not  greater,  approval  from  their  contemporaries ;  two 
hundred  years  from  now  none  of  them  will  be  remembered 
but  Gladstone.  His  fame  will  rest  upon  the  great  achieve- 
ment of  having  saved  the  Empire  he  loved  from  a  policy 
based  upon  ignorance  and  prejudice  which  would  have 
destroyed  it,  and  the  greater  triumph  of  having  liberated  a 
noble  people,  for  centuries  oppressed,  who  will  forever  keep 
his  name  alive  with  their  gratitude. 


THE  NEW   NETHERLANDERS 

[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  the  sixth  annual  festival  of  the 
New  England  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  Philadelphia,  December  22, 
1886.  The  President,  Rev.  Dr.  Heman  L.  Wayland,  was  in  the  chair.  In 
introducing  Mr.  Depew  the  chairman  said  :  "There  are  states  not  set 
down  on  the  map.  We  used  to  hear  of  the  State  of  Camden  and  Amboy. 
[Laughter.]  I  remember  that  when  Commodore  Stockton  resigned  his 
seat  in  the  United  States  Senate,  it  was  remarked  as  an  example  of  close 
adherence  to  official  etiquette  that  his  letter  of  resignation  was  addressed 
to  the  Governor  of  the  State  of  New  Jersey,  and  not  to  the  President  of 
the  Camden  &  Amboy  Railroad.  [Laughter.]  There  is  a  State  to  the 
north  of  us  which  is  largely  known  by  its  initials,  H.  R.  &  N.  Y.  C.  R.  R. 
[Laughter.]  The  presiding  officer  of  that  municipality  is  a  gentleman 
to  whose  honor  it  should  be  said  that  he  recognizes  the  duties  as  well  as 
the  rights  of  the  position,  and  that  high  among  those  duties  he  places 
a  wise  regard  for  the  welfare  of  the  great  army  of  his  employed.  He  is 
not,  it  is  true,  a  native  of  New  England  ;  but  then,  if  you  come  to  that, 
neither  were  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  [Laughter.]  He  belongs  to  a  race 
which  had  much  in  common  with  New  England,  the  same  industry  and 
thrift,  the  same  mastery  of  the  seas,  the  same  love  for  civil  and  religious 
liberty.  Nor  let  us  forget  that  the  refuge  which  the  Pilgrims  could  not 
find  in  their  native  land,  they  found  in  Holland.  The  sentiment,  '  The 
New  Netherlanders,  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  of  Manhattan,'  will  be  responded 
to  by  Hon.  Chauncey  M.  Depew."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — I  do  not  see  why 
you  should  send  to  New  York  for  after-dinner  speakers  when 
you  have  a  chairman  fully  equipped  to  make  a  speech  upon 
every  toast  that  is  presented.  [Laughter.]  He  takes  the 
meat,  as  it  were,  dessicates  it,  and  leaves  the  shell  for  the 
unfortunate  guest  who  is  to  follow.  Next  year  we  will  take 
him  over  to  New  York.  The  President  of  the  New  England 
Society  of  New  York  said  to  me  :  "  Depew,  you  know  a  good 
thing  when  you  see  it.     If  you  find  anything  of  that  sort  in 


350  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

Philadelphia  let  us  know."  I  have  found  it.  [Laughter 
and  applause.] 

I  met  on  the  train,  coming  over  here  to-night,  a  Penn- 
sylvania Dutchman  of  several  generations,  who  asked  me 
what  business  called  me  to  Philadelphia.  I  replied  :  "  I  am 
going  to  attend  the  annual  banquet  of  the  New  England 
Society  of  Pennsylvania  ;  which  I  understand  to  be  the  most 
important  event  that  takes  place  in  that  State."  He  re- 
marked :  "  1  did  not  know  there  was  such  a  society,  nor 
did  I  know  there  were  enough  Yankees  in  Philadelphia 
to  form  a  decent  crowd  around  a  dinner  table ;  because  the 
Yankees  can't  make  money  in  Philadelphia,  and  a  Yankee 
never  stays  where  he  can't  make  money."     [Laughter.] 

It  is  a  most  extraordinary  thing  that  one  should  come 
from  New  York  to  Philadelphia  for  the  purpose  of  attending 
a  New  England  dinner.  It  is  a  most  extraordinary  thing 
that  a  New  England  dinner  should  be  held  in  Philadelphia. 
Your  Chairman  to-night  spoke  of  the  hard  condition  of  the 
Puritans  who  landed  on  Plymouth  Rock.  Let  me  say  that 
if  the  Puritans  had  come  up  the  Delaware,  landed  here  and 
begun  life  with  terrapin  and  canvas-back  duck,  there  never 
would  have  been  any  Puritan  story  to  be  retailed  from  year 
to  year  at  Forefathers'  dinners.  [Laughter.]  If  William 
Penn  had  ever  contemplated  that  around  his  festive  board 
would  sit  those  Puritans  with  whom  he  was  familiar  in 
England,  he  would  have  exclaimed  :  "  Let  all  the  savages  on 
the  Continent  come,  but  not  them."  It  is  one  of  the  pleas- 
ing peculiarities  of  the  Puritan  mind,  as  evidenced  in  the 
admirable  address  of  Mr.  Curtis  here  to-night  (and  when 
you  have  heard  Mr.  Curtis,  you  have  heard  the  best  that  a 
New  Englander,  who  has  been  educated  in  New  York,  can 
do),  that  when  they  erect  a  monument  in  Philadelphia  or 
New  York  to  the  Pilgrim  or  Puritan,  they  say  :  "  See  how 
these  people  respect  the  man  whom  they  profess  to  revile." 
But  they  paid  for  them  and  built  the  monuments  them- 
selves !  [Laughter.]  The  only  New  Englanders  of  Phil- 
adelphia whom  I  have  met  are  the  officials  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad.  When  I  dine  with  them,  enjoy  their 
hospitality,  revel  in  that  glorious  sociability  which  is  their 
characteristic  and  charm,  I  think  that  they  are  Dutchmen. 
When  I  meet  them  in  business,  and  am  impressed  with  their 


THE    NEW    NETHERLANDERS  351 

desire  to   possess   the  earth,  I  think   that  they  came  over  in 
the  "  Mayflower."     [Continued  laughter.] 

There  is  no  part  of  the  world  to-night,  whether  it  be  in 
the  Arctic  Zone,  or  under  the  equatorial  sun,  or  in  monar- 
chies, or  in  despotisms,  or  among  the  Fiji  Islanders,  where 
the  New  Englanders  are  not  gathered  for  the  purpose  of 
celebrating  and  feasting  upon  Forefathers'  Day.  But  there 
is  this  peculiarity  about  the  New  Englander,  that,  if  he 
cannot  find  anybody  to  quarrel  with,  he  gets  up  a  contro- 
versy with  himself,  inside  of  himself.  [Laughter.]  We  who 
expect  to  eat  this  dinner  annually — and  to  take  the  conse- 
quences ! — went  along  peacefully  for  years  with  the  under- 
standing that  the  22d  of  December  was  the  day,  when  it 
suddenly  broke  out  that  the  New  Englander,  within  himself, 
had  got  up  a  dispute  that  the  21st  was  the  day.  I  watched 
it  with  interest,  because  I  always  knew  that  when  a  Yankee 
got  up  a  controversy  with  anybody  else,  it  was  for  his  profit ; 
and  I  wondered  how  he  could  make  anything  by  having  a 
quarrel  with  himself.  Then  I  found  that  he  ate  both  the 
dinners  with  serene  satisfaction  !  [Laughter.]  But  why 
should  a  Dutchman,  a  man  of  Holland  descent,  bring  "  coals 
to  Newcastle"  by  coming  here  among  the  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  for  the  purpose  of  attending  a  New  England 
dinner?  It  is  simply  another  tribute  extorted  by  the  con- 
queror from  the  conquered  people,  in  compelling  him  not 
only  to  part  with  his  possessions,  his  farms,  his  sisters,  his 
daughters,  but  to  attend  the  feast,  to  see  devoured  the 
things  raised  upon  his  own  farm,  and  then  to  assist  the  con- 
queror to  digest  them  by  telling  him  stories.     [Laughter.] 

My  first  familiarity  with  the  Boston  mind  and  its  pecu- 
liarities was  when  I  was  a  small  boy,  in  that  little  Dutch 
hamlet  on  the  Hudson  where  I  was  born,  when  we  were 
electrified  by  the  State  Superintendent  of  Massachusetts 
coming  to  deliver  us  an  address.  He  said  :  "  My  children, 
there  was  a  little  flaxen-haired  boy  in  a  school  that  I  ad- 
dressed last  year ;  and  when  I  came  over  this  year,  he  was 
gone.  Where  do  you  suppose  he  had  gone?"  One  of  our 
little  Dutch  innocents  replied,  "  To  heaven."  "  Oh,  no,  my 
boy,"  the  Superintendent  said,  *' he  is  a  clerk  in  a  store  in 
Boston."     [Laughter.] 

John  Winslow  said  that  the  Connecticut  River  was  the 


352  CHAUNCEY   MITCHELL    DEPEW 

dividing  line  between  the  Continent  of  New  England  and 
the  Continent  of  America  ;  and  he  foresaw  the  time,  in  his 
imagination,  when  there  should  grow  up,  upon  the  eastern 
side  of  the  Connecticut  River,  a  population  of  hundreds  of 
thousands,  perhaps  millions,  who  would  enjoy  their  homes, 
their  liberties,  civil  and  religious,  and  build  up  a  State.  lie 
never  looked  forward  to  that  time,  in  the  evolution  of  the 
species,  when  the  New  England  farm  would  pass  from  the 
hands  of  the  Puritan  into  the  possession  of  the  Irishman, 
who  would  cultivate  it  and  earn  a  living  where  the  Yankee 
could  not  live,  and  who  would  threaten  the  supremacy  of 
New  England  faith  and  the  supremacy  of  New  England  pol- 
itics. If  he  had  looked  forward,  he  would  have  rejoiced  in  the 
fact  that,  in  the  expansion  of  the  New  England  idea  and  in 
the  exodus  of  the  New  England  Pilgrim,  the  Yankee  marched 
forth  over  the  continent  to  possess  it  and  to  build  it 
up  in  the  interests  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  ;  so  that, 
instead  of  a  few  hundred  thousands  on  the  sterile  hills  of 
New  England,  sixty  millions  of  people  should  rise  up  and 
call  him  blessed  in  the  plenitude  of  a  power,  a  greatness 
and  a  future  unequalled  among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

If  from  any  of  the  planets  in  our  sphere  there  should 
come  a  being  endowed  with  larger  perceptions  and  observa- 
tions than  our  own,  and  not  familiar  with  our  civilization  or 
creeds,  and  he  should  drop  in  at  a  New  England  dinner  any- 
where to-night,  he  might  ask,  "Who  are  these  people?" 
and  he  would  be  told,  "They  are  the  people  who  claim  to 
have  created  this  great  Republic,  and  to  have  put  into  it 
all  that  is  in  it  that  is  worth  preserving."  If  he  should  ask, 
"  What  is  their  creed  and  faith,  and  what  do  they  worship  ?  " 
he  would  be  told  to  wait  and  listen  to  their  speeches. 
When  finally  he  had  gone  out,  he  would  say,  "  They  wor- 
ship their  forefathers  and  themselves."  [Laughter.]  And 
yet  there  is  not  a  descendant  of  the  Pilgrims  in  this  room 
to-night  who  could  stay  in  a  ten-acre  lot  for  three  hours  v\"ith 
his  ancestors,  to  save  his  soul.  [Laughter.]  There  is  not 
one  of  those  gaunt,  ascetic  and  bigoted  men  who  sang 
through  his  nose  and  talked  cant,  as  described  here  so  effect- 
ively on  the  other  side  of  the  picture  presented  by  Mr.  Cur- 
tis, who  would  not  have  every  one  of  his  descendants  here 
to-night  put  into  the  lock-up  as   roystering   blades,  danger- 


THE    NEW    NETHEKLANDERS  353 

oustothe  morals  of  the  community.  But,  nevertheless,  i 
can  join  in  that  measure  of  sweet  song,  of  magnificent  adu- 
lation and  superb  eulogium  which  has  been  given  to  us  from 
the  tongue  and  pen  of  one  who  has  no  equal  among  our 
speakers  and  writers  of  America. 

The  Puritan  was  a  grand  character.  He  was  a  grand 
character,  because  of  what  he  was  and  did,  and  because  of 
what  circumstances  made  him.  Fighting  with  the  State  for 
his  liberty,  he  learned  to  doubt,  and  then  to  deny,  the  divine 
right  of  kings.  Fighting  with  the  Church  for  his  conscience, 
its  possession  and  expression,  he  learned  to  doubt,  and  then 
to  deny,  the  divine  right  of  hierarchies ;  but  this  created  within 
him  that  spirit  which  made  him  recognize  that  the  only 
foundation  of  the  Church,  if  it  will  live,  that  the  only  foun- 
dation of  the  State,  if  it  will  be  free,  is  man  and  the  man- 
hood of  the  individual.  The  family  idea  of  all  ages  created 
the  patriarch  and  his  rule,  the  chieftain  of  the  tribe  and  his 
rule,  the  despot  and  his  rule,  the  military  chieftain  and  his 
rule,  the  feudal  lord  and  his  rule  ;  every  step  illumining 
the  individual,  crushing  liberty,  producing  despotism, 
making  the  riders  and  the  ridden  ;  but  when  the  Puritan 
discovered,  as  he  annunciated  in  the  cabin  of  the  "  May- 
flower," that  there  should  be  just  and  equal  laws,  and 
before  those  laws  all  men  should  stand  equal  ;  when  he 
carried  out  in  his  administration  that  there  should  be  the 
township  as  the  basis  of  the  State,  and  the  State  as  the  unit 
out  of  which  should  be  created  the  Republic,  then  he  dis- 
covered the  sublime  and  eternal  principle  which  solves  all 
difficulties  of  Home    Rule  and  modern  liberty. 

Now,  this  magnificent  man  never  would  have  amounted 
to  much,  never  would  have  founded  a  State,  never  would 
have  builded  a  government,  if  Providence  had  not  sent  him  to 
Holland,  among  my  ancestors.  The  Pilgrim  who  went  to 
Holland,  and  there  learned  toleration,  there  learned  to  re- 
spect the  rights,  the  opinions  and  liberties  of  others  ;  there 
learned  the  principle  of  the  common  school  and  universal 
education  ;  when  he  got  to  Plymouth  Rock,  never  burned 
witches,  never  hanged  Quakers,  never  drove  out  Baptists  ; 
he  always  fought  against  all  this.  It  was  the  Puritan, 
20,000  strong,  who  came  years  afterwards,  who  did  those 
things  ;  and,  except  for  the  leaven  of  the  Pilgrim  who  had 
23 


354  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

been  to  Holland,  the  Puritan  would  not  be  celebrated  here 
to-night.  P'our  hundred  of  them  went  to  Holland,  every 
man  with  a  creed  of  his  own  and  anxious  to  burn  at  the 
stake  the  other  three  hundred  and  ninety-nine  because  they 
did  not  agree  with  him.  But  being  there  enlightened,  they 
discovered  the  magnificence  of  the  universe.  All  over  Hol- 
land they  saw  compulsory  school  education  sustained  by 
the  State.  They  found  a  country  in  which  there  was  uni- 
versal toleration  of  religion,  in  which  the  persecuted  Jew 
could  find  an  asylum,  in  which  even  the  Inquisitor  could 
be  safe  from  the  vengeance  of  his  enemies  ;  and  there,  after 
they  had  been  prepared  to  found  a  State,  and  to  build  it, 
when  they  got  down  to  Delfshaven  to  depart,  the  Dutch- 
men, in  their  hospitality,  gave  them  a  farewell  dinner  as  a 
send-off.  It  was  the  first  good  dinner  they  had  ever  had, 
the  first  square  meal  the  Puritan  ever  had.  [Laughter.]  It 
followed  that  when  they  went  on  board  the  ship  they  were 
happy  and  they  were— full.  I  do  not  know  whether  the 
word  "  full "  had  the  same  signifiance  in  those  times  that  it 
has  now,  or  not.  [Laughter.]  And  then  Pastor  Robinson 
preached  the  sermon  in  the  afternoon,  in  which  he  told  them 
that  the  whole  truth  was  not  given  to  Luther,  though  he 
thought  so,  nor  to  Calvin,  though  his  disciples  said  so  ;  but 
that  in  the  future  there  would  be  a  development  of  the  truth 
which  they  must  nurse  and  evolute.  See  how  they  have 
nursed  and  evoluted  it.  Why,  they  have  nursed  and  evo- 
luted  that  truth  into  so  many  creeds  and  doctrines  on  the 
sterile  hills  of  New  England  that  they  deny  the  existence 
of  a  heaven — many  of  them  ;  and  many  more  would  deprive 
us  of  the  comforts  of  a  hell  for — some  people.  [Laughter.] 
Now,  who  were  those  people  who  founded  New  Nether- 
lands and  who  entertained  so  hospitably  those  Puritans  and 
gave  them  such  a  grand  send-off  ?  I  remember  that  a 
vicious  and  irate  adherent  of  the  Stuarts  says,  in  his  history, 
looking  with  vengeance  upon  the  accession  of  William  of 
Orange  to  the  throne  of  England,  that  the  Puritan  and  the 
Hollander  were  shaken  out  of  the  same  bag.  And  so  they 
were.  That  same  vigorous  Northern  stock  came  down  to 
settle  upon  the  marshes  of  Holland  and  in  the  fens  of  Eng- 
land. The  stock  that  remained  in  England  produced  Pym 
and    Hampden,   and    Sidney  and    Russell,    with  a    cross  of 


THE    NEW    NETIIERLANDERS  355 

Swedish  pirate  or  Nortliern  conqueror;  ])ut  tlie  orifjinal 
stock  which  went  to  Holland  fought  off  forever,  during  its 
whole  existence,  the  power  of  the  Roman  Empire  ;  fought 
off  the  hordes  of  barbarians  who  came  down  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  Roman  Empire,  fought  off  all  the  forces 
and  powers  of  mediaeval  chivalry  and  won  their  grand 
victory  when  they  took  from  the  sea  herself  a  land,  that 
upon  it  they  might  govern  themselves  upon  the  principles  of 
their  own  manhood  and  of  civil  and  religious  liberty.  Those 
people  were  not  a  selfish  people  ;  but  they  liked  to  be  by 
themselves  and  to  govern  themselves.  Theirs  was  precisely 
the  sentiment  of  the  Hebrew  speculator  in  Wall  Street  re- 
cently, who,  when  he  had  scooped  everybody  about  him, 
gathered  his  co-conspirators  around  the  festive  board  and 
said  to  them,  "  Now,  shentlemen,  we  feel  shust  as  if  we  were 
among  ourselves."     [Laughter.] 

Holland,  at  a  time  when  there  was  no  light  for  man  any- 
where in  the  world,  preserved  the  principles  of  civil  liberty. 
Holland,  at  a  time  when  learning  was  crushed  out  or  buried 
in  the  monasteries,  had  her  asylums,  her  libraries  and  her 
universities.  Holland,  at  a  time  when  the  bigotry  of  the 
church  crushed  out  all  expression  of  conscience  and  individ- 
ual belief,  had  her  toleration  and  religious  liberty.  For  a 
century,  Holland  was  the  safe-deposit  company  of  the 
rights  of  man.  For  a  century,  Holland  was  the  electric 
light  which  illumined  the  world  and  saved  mankind. 

But,  gentlemen,  how  did  your  forefathers  repay  my  an- 
cestors for  all  this  kindness?  Why,  you  came  over  to  New 
York  to  teach  school,  and  you  got  into  the  confiding  Dutch 
families  ;  you  married  their  daughters  ;  and  then,  as  the 
able  son-in-law,  you  administered  upon  the  estate  and  you 
gave  us — what  was  left.  [Laughter.]  Yet  I  am  willing  to 
admit  that  the  Dutchmen  never  could  have  colonized  this 
country  or  created  this  Republic.  I  am  willing  to  admit 
that  my  ancestors  were  too  pleasure-loving,  comfort-loving 
and  home-loving.  They  needed  just  that  strain  which  you 
have,  which  is  never  tired,  never  restful,  never  at  peace  ; 
just  that  strain  which,  receiving  sufficient  capital  to  start 
with  from  my  ancestors,  went  out  and  crossed  the  borders 
and  built  up  all  these  grand  Western  and  Northwestern 
States  .and  carried  civilization  across  the  continent  to  the 


356  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

Pacific  coast.  You  go  into  a  territory,  you  organize  the  men 
of  all  nationalities  and  of  all  languages  who  are  there  into  a 
territorial  government ;  then  you  organize  them  into  a 
State  ;  then  you  take  the  Governorships  and  the  Judgeships  ; 
then  you  found  the  capital  at  the  place  where  you  own  all 
the  town-lots ;  then  you  bring  the  territory  into  the  Union, 
and  the  glory  and  perfection  of  the  Federal  principle  is  vindi- 
cated. But,  without  you  and  just  these  incentives,  we  never 
would  have  had  an  American  Republic  as  great  and  glo- 
rious as  it  is. 

But,  with  all  your  selfishness,  with  all  your  desire  for 
profit,  for  pelf,  for  gain,  there  is  this  underlying  principle 
in  the  Yankee  :  in  every  community  which  he  founds,  in 
every  State  which  he  builds,  he  carries  with  him  the  church, 
he  carries  with  him  the  schoolhouse.  He  may  want  money, 
and  he  will  get  it  if  he  can  ;  he  may  want  property,  and  he 
will  get  it  if  he  can  ;  but,  first  and  foremost,  he  must  have 
liberty  of  conscience,  liberty  of  thought,  liberty  of  speech, 
all  of  liberty  that  belongs  to  a  man,  consonant  with  the 
liberty  of  others  ;  and  he  must  have  that  same  liberty  for 
every  man  beside  himself.     [Applause.] 


YALE  UNIVERSITY 

[Speecli  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  a  dinner  of  the  Yale  Alumni,  New 
York,  January  20,  188S.  Dr.  Depew  presided  and,  in  opening  the  speak- 
ing, announced  the  apologies  of  some  who  were  unable  to  be  present, 
among  whom  were  William  M.  Evarts,  Wayne  MacVeagh  and  Abram 
Hewitt.  When  the  laughter  following  Dr.  Depew's  humorous  presenta- 
tion of  these  apologies  had  subsided,  he  said  :  "  Notwithstanding  these 
disappointments,  Yale  is  here.  [Applause.]  For  the  loss  of  no  man  af- 
fects Yale.  [Applause.]  It  only  affects  the  man  himself."  Then  he 
turned  to  his  speech,  which  follows.] 

Gentlemen  : — An  eminent  alumnus  said  to  me  some  years 
ago  that  there  was  not  enough  in  the  theme  or  enthusiasm 
to  sustain  the  annual  dinner  for  any  American  college.  The 
conditions  which  he  contemplated  at  the  time  this  remark 
was  made,  justified  the  assertion.  The  annual  collegiate 
dinner  at  varying  intervals  was  celebrated  and  abandoned, 
and  nowhere  except   in   New  York  was  it  observed  at  all. 


YALE    UNIVERSITY  357 

Now  there  is  no  territory  in  the  United  States  that  does  not 
look  forward  with  increasing  interest  to  these  gatherings, 
and  they  have  become  so  frequent  and  at  points  so  distant 
that  the  health  and  digestion  of  the  college  presidents  have 
been  found  absolutely  unequal  to  their  demands.  [Laughter.] 
We  need  not  look  far  for  the  reasons  of  this  extraordinary 
and  significant  revolution.  The  college  of  Abelard,  which 
the  conservatism  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  confined  within 
the  scholastic  limits  of  the  classics  and  creeds,  continued  to 
be,  until  the  close  of  our  Civil  War,  very  largely  the  col- 
lege of  the  Republic.  Not  the  least  of  the  emancipations  of 
that  terrific  struggle  was  the  liberalism  of  the  university. 
The  spirit  of  unrest  was  communicated  from  the  alumni  to 
the  faculty,  from  the  faculty  to  the  students.  The  mighty 
forces  which  were  combined  in  the  prodigious  development 
of  the  nation  urged  irresistibly  upon  the  colleges  the  ne- 
cessity of  an  education  which  should  be  abreast  of  the  times. 
[Applause.]  The  old  training  which  gave  to  the  student 
mental  discipline  and  little  else,  must  be  exchanged  for  the 
new  learning  which  would  give  him  mental  discipline  and 
everything  else. 

With  scarcely  any  adequate  recognition  of  the  change, 
the  great  colleges  of  the  country  advanced  in  the  years  fol- 
lowing the  war  with  a  step  that  kept  pace  with  the  highest 
progress  of  the  age.  When  our  New  York  alumni  began  to 
question  the  policy  of  the  college  and  claim  that  it  was  not 
producing  the  peculiar  results  which  the  times  demanded, 
the  college  had  already  reached  a  point  beyond  the  demands 
of  the  critics.  [Applause.]  The  youth,  the  experience,  the 
talent  for  administration,  the  popularity  of  its  new  president, 
enabled  him  to  seize  at  once  upon  all  the  elements  of 
university  life  which  existed  in  the  college,  and  with  the 
material  which  only  required  the  moulding  hand  of  a  great 
architect,  to  build  upon  the  old  foundation  a  Nineteenth 
Century  university.  [Applause.]  From  the  teacher  only, 
the  president  became  the  executive  of  teachers;  from  the 
active  head  of  a  department,  lie  became  the  responsible 
manager  of  all  departments  and  the  sole  administrator  of 
the  young  republic.  The  college  was  no  longer  bureaucratic 
and  disintegrated  in  its  work,  but  it  had  an  efficient  execu- 
tive and  an  admirable  working  cabinet.     [Applause.] 


358  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

There  is  this  difference  between  these  two  greatest  and 
most  beneficent  governments  on  earth, — that  of  the  United 
States  and  that  of  the  University  of  Yale — one  does  not 
know  how  to  handle  a  surplus  in  the  treasury,  and  the  other 
is  showing  a  marvellous  ability  with  a  deficiency.  [Laugh- 
ter and  applause.]  Not  that  Yale  is  in  debt  or  running 
down,  but  her  resources  and  income  are  unequal  to  her 
superb  preparation  for  expansion  and  her  great  opportun- 
ities. 

The  resurrecting  process  and  the  rapid  evolutions  which 
followed  the  creation  of  the  university,  developed  limitless 
opportunities  for  useful  work.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  say- 
ing from  personal  examination  of  the  subject  that,  if  the 
liberal  wealth,  which  is  so  freely  bestowed  when  rightly  in- 
formed, could  be  given  to  the  extent  of  three  or  four  mil- 
lions of  dollars  to  Yale  University,  there  would  be  in  New 
Haven,  within  five  or  six  years,  an  institution  of  learning  so 
full  rounded  and  complete  in  every  department  of  educa- 
tion, of  thought  and  of  practical  work,  that  it  would  have  no 
equal  in  any  country  of  the  world.  [Prolonged  applause.] 
Its  influence  would  be  felt  through  the  magnificent  equip- 
ment of  its  graduates  to  the  lasting  honor  and  glory  of  the 
country. 

The  graduate  of  thirty  years  ago  could  not  enter  the 
freshman  class  of  to-day.  [Laughter.]  His  education  has 
come  to  him  largely  through  the  hard  knocks  and  trying 
experience  of  the  making  of  a  career,  and  yet  he  feels  more 
strongly  than  anyone  else  the  advantages  of  an  all-embrac- 
ing university.  He  knows  that  the  student  of  the  present 
and  of  the  future  should  be  left,  not  to  his  own  ideas  of 
what  he  needs,  not  to  the  narrowing  forces  of  a  specialty 
through  the  abuse  of  the  optional  system,  but  he  should  be 
so  broadly  cultured  and  at  the  same  time  so  practically  in- 
formed, that  when  he  comes  out  and  enters  the  law  which 
will  narrow  him  ;  upon  the  pulpit  of  his  sect,  which  may 
make  him  to  some  extent  a  bigot ;  upon  the  journalistic 
career,  which  will  develop  the  partisan  ;  upon  the  medical  or 
scientific  course  which  will  absorb  his  attention  and  en- 
thusiasm from  other  pursuits,  the  healthful  and  never-ceas- 
ing influence  of  the  broad  and  general  realization  of  his 
universal  education   will  prevent   him  from  ever  becoming 


YALE    UNIVERSITY  359 

completely  narrow  or   bigoted   or   partisan  or  blind.     [Ap- 
plause.] 

We  go  back  to  our  college  home  at  the  annual  Commence- 
ment  after  a  lapse  of  years  and  we  rejoice  and  are  proud  of 
the  things  that  make  it  unlike  the  Yale  of  old.  Our  grati- 
tude and  our  admiration  are  outspoken  for  the  Sheffield 
foundation,  the  Peabody,  the  Sloane,  the  Dwight  Mall  con- 
tributions, the  buildings  which  immortalize  the  donors  and 
aggrandize  the  college,  and  we  say  to  the  corporation  and 
the  faculty:  "Some  things  arc  sacred  and  must  not  be 
touched;  increase  your  improvements  but,  no  matter  how 
weighty  the  considerations  for  the  change,  spare  the  college 
fence.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  It  is  connected  with 
associations  that  are  tender  and  reminiscences  that  are  rich 
beyond  the  power  of  eloquence  or  poetry  to  portray.  [Ap- 
plause.] The  seat  upon  the  college  fence  was  our  first  title 
of  manhood.  From  it  we  viewed  for  the  first  time  that 
beatific  vision  of  the  New  Haven  student,  the  New  Haven 
girl ;  but  whenever  we  returned,  no  matter  how  long  have 
been  the  intervening  years,  she  looks  as  fresh  and  beautiful 
as  if  she  had  drunk  at  the  fountain  of  perennial  youth. 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  Sitting  upon  the  fence,  no 
matter  how  our  early  musical  training  may  liave  been 
neglected,  we  have  there  acquired  a  musical  education. 
[Laughter.]  The  intense  and  absorbing  strain  produced  by 
the  excitements  of  the  opera  compels  the  continuous  con- 
versation during  the  acts  to  escape  the  dangers  incident  to 
nervous  prostration,  but  when  the  sound  is  in  progress  upon 
the  college  fence,  no  conversation  is  possible — or  desirable. 
What  Thermopylae  was  to  Greece,  Runnymeade  to  England, 
Yorktown  to  the  American  Republic,  the  fence  is  to  the 
student  and  alumnus  of  Yale,  and  it  must  not  be  touched.' 
[Laughter  and  applause.] 

At  the  Columbia  dinner  an  eloquent  and  witty  repre- 
sentative of  Harvard  took  occasion  in  recounting  the  recent 
glories  of  Yale  to  speak  slightingly  of  her  Sunday  evening 
appearance  at  Dockstader's  theatre.  His  remarks  illus- 
trated upon  what  widely  different  lines  Harvard  and  Yale 
have  progressed  from  their  Puritan  foundation. 

When  the  Monday  morning  after  we  met,  the  metropolitan 
press  took  exception  to  the  remarks  of  Stagg  that  he  al- 


360  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

ways  prayed  before  he  pitched,  it  showed  a  lamentable 
ignorance  of  the  true  meaning  of  the  Puritan  spirit.  It  was 
of  the  same  origin  as  Cromwell's  famous  order  :  "  Trust  in 
God  and  keep  your  powder  dry,"  which  carried  his  Iron- 
sides to  victory  and  liberty.  [Applause.]  It  meant  that 
we  are  not  fatalists,  but  believe  in  the  old  doctrine  that 
"  God  helps  those  who  help  themselves,  and  those  who 
help  themselves  God  only  helps."  But  Harvard  had 
a  closer  territorial  relationship  and  repulsion  from  the 
extremes  of  Puritan  history ;  instead  of  beginning  her 
athletic  contests  in  the  spirit  and  with  the  invoca- 
tion of  Naseby  and  Marston  Moor,  she  ends  them  by  im- 
itating the  example  of  that  famous  army  which  was  the 
antithesis  of  Puritanism,  and  of  whom  the  historian  says 
that  "  they  swore  terribly  in  Flanders."  [Laughter  and 
applause.]  The  athletic  record  of  the  year  reads  like  a 
triumphal  announcement  of  the  heralds  at  the  Olympian 
games.  With  bat  and  ball  and  oar  on  land  and  water  the 
blue  has  been  uniformly  triumphant  and  Yale  reigns 
supreme.  Columbia  cheers  and  strives  to  imitate,  Prince- 
ton applauds  and  despairs,  and  Harvard  goes  back  to 
Cambridge  and  kicks;  but  her  misfortune  is,  that  she  does 
not  kick  hard  enought  at  the  right  time.  The  athletic 
triumphs  of  Yale  are  celebrated  by  the  increasing  number 
of  the  Freshman  class,  for  the  students  at  the  preparatory 
schools  know  what  constitutes  the  higher  branches  of  a 
liberal  education.  But  the  enthusiasm  of  the  victory 
stretches  beyond  the  field  and  the  college  walls.  It  stirs 
up  the  old  doctor  riding  around  on  his  country  calls  ;  it 
gives  a  sensation  not  felt  in  years  to  the  old  lawyer  among 
his  dusty  briefs  ;  it  quickens  the  pulse  of  the  judge  upon 
the  bench,  the  grave  statesman  of  the  Senate,  the  journalist 
in  his  sanctum,  and  the  minister  in  his  study,  and  brings  to 
the  surface  that  deep  bond  of  sympathy  which  binds  in 
one  united  whole  the  students  and  faculty,  corporation  and 
the  alumni  of  the  University  of  Yale.  Gentlemen,  here's 
to  Yale  and  her  President,  Timothy  Dwight.  [Great  ap- 
plause.J 


UNSOLVED    I'KOliLKMS  36 1 


UNSOLVED  PROBLEMS 

[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  the  eighty-fourth  anniversary  ban- 
quet of  the  New  Enghmd  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December 
23,  18S9.  Cornelius  N.  Bhss,  President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair. 
The  title  of  the  toast  was  "  Unsolved  Problems."  The  sentiments  as- 
sociated with  this  toast  were  as  follows  : 

"There  are  many  events  in  the  womb  of  time  that  will  be  deliv- 
ered."— Othello,  Act.  I,  Sc.  3. 

"  Since  the  affairs  of  men  rest  still  uncertain, 
Let's  reason  with  the  worst  that  may  befall." 

Julius  Caesar,  Act.  V,  Sc.   i.] 

President  Bliss  .said  that  it  was  not  neces.sary  to  introduce  the  man  who 
would  respond  to  this  toast — "  A  man  who  made  but  one  mistake  in  his 
life,  which  was  being  born  in  Peekskill,  instead  of  in  New  England. 
No  New  England  feast,  however,  is  complete  without  him.  We  respect, 
admire  and  love  him — Chauncey  M.  Depew."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen:  —  The  evolution  of 
the  Puritan  in  problem  solving  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting of  studies.  He  acquired  the  faculty  slowly,  but 
his  developed  genius  in  this  work  has  made  modern  his- 
tory. Before  and  after  the  English  conquest  of  New 
Amsterdam,  the  Yankee  schoolmasters  had  given  Dutch 
youths  object  lessons  in  the  value  of  this  talent  by  set- 
ting  them  sums  which  they  could  not  do.  [Laughter.] 
By  making  the  sums  easy  for  the  girls  they  won  away  the 
Dutchmen's  sweethearts  and  the  broad  acres  of  their  sires. 
[More  laughter.]  But  the  Puritans  began  their  develop- 
ment by  licking  the  teacher.  [Cheers.]  Cromwell  and 
Hampden  were  the  leaders  of  revolt  against  authority,  and 
Naseby,  Marston  Moor,  and  Dunbar,  victories  over  the 
Church  and  the  university.  When  the  Puritans  in  their 
turn  were  whipped,  they  did  not  accept  either  the  doctrine 
or  the  ceremonial,  but  they  ran  away.  They  played  hookey 
on  a  gigantic  scale,  and  never  came  again  within  the  power 
of  the  teachers  of  their  age.  But  during  their  sojourn  of 
thirteen  years  in  Holland,  they  learned  that  truth  is  an  active 
germ,  which  may  be  protected,  but  cannot  grow  by  protests 
and  resistance.  To  regenerate  the  world,  to  create  the  con- 
ditions   dimly  shadowed  by   their   prayerful  aspiration.s,  it 


362  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL   DEPEW 

must  be  planted  in  every  soil,  and  nurtured  and  cultured  in 
the  midst  of  the  most  discouraging  and  forbidding  surround- 
ings. 

The  Dutch  had  solved  their  problems.  They  had  saved 
and  kept  alive  for  all  the  earth  the  expiring  spark  of  liberty. 
They  had  won  and  were  enjoying  civil  and  religious  freedom. 
Their  little  land  was  the  sole  asylum  on  the  globe  for  per- 
secuted conscience  and  the  victims  of  tyranny.  They  liad 
the  university  and  the  common  school.  But  it  was  their 
nature  to  be  content.  Their  race  was  not  of  the  propagan- 
dist kind.  They  were  never  stirred  with  an  uneasy  and  un- 
quenchable desire  to  do  something  for  other  peoples.  They 
had  profound  faith  in  the  virtue  of  minding  their  own  busi- 
ness. They  encircled  the  earth  with  their  commerce  and 
their  colonies,  but  only  for  trade.  The  world  stood  upon 
the  great  divide  between  retrogression  and  progress.  It  re- 
quired the  spirit  of  the  martyrs,  the  courage  of  the  crusaders, 
the  self-denial  of  religious  enthusiasts,  minds  liberalized  by 
culture  and  consciences  broadened  by  tolerance,  to  lead  this 
majestic  advance  of  the  peoples  to  the  lofty  planes  of  in- 
dividual liberty  and  the  highest  civilization,  and  God  gave 
the  commissions  to  the  Puritan  pilgrims  from  Holland. 
[Cheers.] 

They  were  practical  statesmen,  these  pilgrims.  They 
wasted  no  time  theorizing  upon  methods,  but  went  straight 
at  the  mark.  They  solved  the  Indian  problem  with  shot- 
guns, and  it  was  not  General  Sherman  but  Miles  Standish 
who  originated  the  axiom  that  the  only  good  Indians  are  the 
dead  ones.  They  were  bound  by  neither  customs  nor 
traditions,  nor  committals  to  this  or  that  policy.  The  only 
question  with  them  was,  Does  it  work  ?  The  success  of 
their  Indian  experiment  led  them  to  try  similar  methods 
with  witches,  Quakers,  and  Baptists.  Their  failure  taught 
them  the  difference  between  mind  and  matter.  A  dead 
savage  was  another  wolf  under  ground,  but  one  of  them- 
selves, persecuted  or  killed  for  conscience'  sake,  sowed  the 
seed  of  discontent  and  disbelief.  The  effort  to  wall  in  a 
creed  and  wall  out  liberty  was  at  once  abandoned,  and  to- 
day New  England  has  more  religions  and  not  less  religion, 
but  less  bigotry,  than  any  other  community  in  the  world. 
[Cheers.]     Mr.  Gladstone,  in  his  broad  and  brilliant,  but  not 


UNSOLVED    PROBLEMS  363 

always  accurate,  generalizations,  said  that  a  most  interesting 
thing  about  the  pilgrims  was,  that  having  left  England  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  and  braved  the  hardships  and 
perils  of  the  sea  and  the  wilderness,  to  enjoy  the  privilege 
of  worshipping  God  according  to  the  dictates  of  their  own 
consciences,  they  had  so  impressed  upon  their  children  their 
own  intense  piety  that  their  descendants,  after  a  lapse  of 
more  than  two  centuries,  were  returning  to  the  mother 
country  by  the  thousands  with  the  single  purpose  of  revisit- 
ing the  grand  old  cathedrals  in  which  their  ancestors  wor- 
shipped. I  did  not  disillusionize  the  Grand  Old  Man  by 
telling  him  that,  though  having  a  larger  acquaintance  than 
any  person  in  America,  I  had  never  met  that  pilgrim,  nor  by 
remarking  that  the  fathers,  if  they  could  have  had  their  way, 
would  have  torn  down  the  cathedrals  as  the  sanctuaries  of 
Antichrist;  and  that  while  their  descendants  know  more 
about  architecture,  they  have  little  more  reverence  than 
their  ancestors  for  religion  symbolized  in  stone. 

In  an  age  when  dynamite  was  unknown,  the  pilgrim  in- 
vented in  the  cabin  of  the  "  Mayflower"  the  most  powerful  of 
explosives.  The  declaration  of  the  equality  of  all  men  be- 
fore the  law  has  rocked  thrones  and  consolidated  classes.  It 
separated  the  colonies  from  Great  Britain,  and  created  the 
United  States.  [Cheers.]  It  pulverized  the  chains  of  the 
slaves,  and  gave  manhood  suffrage.  [Cheers.]  It  devolved 
upon  the  individual  the  functions  of  government,  and  made 
the  people  the  sole  source  of  power.  It  substituted  the  cap  of 
liberty  for  the  royal  crown  in  France,  and  by  a  bloodless  rev- 
olution has  added  to  the  constellation  of  American  republics 
the  star  of  Brazil.  [Cheers.]  But  with  the  ever-varying  con- 
ditions incident  to  free  government,  the  Puritan's  talent  as  a 
political  mathematician  will  never  rust.  Problems  of  the  ut- 
most importance  press  upon  him  for  solution.  When,  in  the 
effort  to  regulate  the  liquor  traffic,  he  has  advanced  beyond 
the  temper  of  the  times  and  the  sentiment  of  the  people  in 
the  attempt  to  enact  or  enforce  prohibition,  and  either  been 
disastrously  defeated  or  the  flagrant  evasions  of  the  statutes 
have  brought  the  law  into  contempt,  he  does  not  despair,  but 
tries  to  find  the  error  in  his  calculation.     [Applause.] 

If  gubernatorial  objections  block  the  way  of  high  license, 
he  will  bombard  the  executive  judgment  and  conscience  by 


364  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

a  proposition  to  tax.  The  destruction  of  homes,  the  ruin  of 
the  young,  the  increase  of  pauperism  and  crime,  the  added 
burdens  upon  the  taxpayers  by  the  evils  of  intemperance,  ap- 
peal with  resistless  force  to  his  training  and  traditions.  As 
the  power  of  the  saloon  increases  the  difficulties  of  the  task, 
he  becomes  more  and  more  certain  that  some  time  or  other 
and  in  some  way  or  other  he  will  do  that  sum.     [Applause.] 

The  Dutchman  soon  tires  before  such  obstacles,  and  takes 
his  ease.  Theheir  of  three  generations  of  Dutchmen  at  Peek- 
skill,  to  whom  his  father  had  left  the  whole  estate,  said,  after 
the  contest  over  the  will  had  been  going  on  for  a  year,  "  This 
fight  gives  me  so  much  trouble  that  I  am  almost  sorry  that 
dad  died."  [Laughter.]  But  the  further  the  Puritan  got  in 
that  contest  the  more  he  would  enjoy  it.  He  would  not  care 
so  much  for  the  principles  underlying  the  construction  of 
wills  as  to  settle  the  question,  even  if  it  took  his  whole  prop- 
erty, whether  a  man  can  do  what  he  likes  with  his  own.  In 
the  meantime,  he  is  not  disturbed  by  any  unavailing  regrets 
over  the  sad  event  which  gave  him  his  opportunity. 

Corporations  and  individuals,  with  the  American  talent  for 
affairs,  have  settled  satisfactorily  the  basis  upon  which  em- 
ployment yields  the  greater  happiness  to  the  employed  and 
the  larger  returns  to  the  business.  The  intelligence  and  ad- 
mirable service  of  the  750,000  men  on  the  pay-rolls  of  the  rail- 
way companies  of  the  country  have  been  demonstrated. 
[Cheers.]  The  system  by  which  they  are  appointed  and  pro- 
moted is  no  secret.  It  is  in  accord  with  human  nature  and 
common-sense.  It  is  only  the  Government  of  the  most  prac- 
tical people  in  the  world  whose  operations  with  100,000  em- 
ployes are  paralyzed  by  this  problem.  The  continuance  of 
the  amazing  spectacle  of  the  periodical  demoralization  of  the 
business  of  the  Government  by  the  concentration  of  the  time 
of  the  administration  upon  the  distribution  of  patronage,  and 
of  the  eyes  of  the  people  on  the  wheel  which  holds  the  blanks 
and  the  prizes  in  the  lottery  of  offices,  shows  that  the  Pilgrim 
has  hitherto  been  so  busy  with  many  great  questions  as  to 
neglect  the  solution  of  some  of  the  most  important  of  them. 
[Applause.] 

Thirty  years  ago  Robert  Toombs,  of  Georgia,  one  of  the 
ablest  and  most  brilliant  defenders  of  slavery,  said,  in  his 
place  in  the  United   States  Senate,  that  he  would  yet  call 


UNSOLVED    PROBLEMS  365 

the  roll  of  his  bondmen  ;it  tin;  foot  of  Bunker  Hill  Alonii- 
mcnt.  To-day  his  slaves  arc  citizens  and  voters.  [Cheers.  | 
Within  a  few  days  a  youn^^er  Georgian,  possessed  of  equal 
genius,  but  imbued  with  sentiments  so  liberal  that  the  great 
Senator  would  have  held  him  an  enemy  to  the  State,  was 
the  guest  of  Boston.  With  powers  of  presentation  and 
fervor  of  declamation  worthy  the  best  days  and  noblest 
efforts  of  eloquence,  he  stood  beneath  the  shadow  of  Bunker 
Hill  and  uttered  opinions  justifying  the  suppression  of  the 
negro  vote  which  were  hostile  to  the  views  of  every  man 
in  his  audience.  And  yet  they  gave  to  his  argument  an 
eager  and  candid  hearing,  and  to  his  oratory  unstinted  and 
generous  applause.  It  was  the  triumph  of  Puritan  prin- 
ciples and  Puritan  pluck.  [Cheers.]  They  knew,  as  we 
know,  that  no  system  of  suffrage  can  survive  the  intimida- 
tion of  the  voter  or  falsification  of  the  count.  [Cheers.] 
The  public  conscience,  seared  by  the  approv^al  of  fraud 
upon  the  ballot  by  the  virtue  and  intelligence  of  the  com- 
munity, will  soon  be  indifferent  to  the  extension  of  these 
methods  by  the  present  officeholders  to  continue  in  power, 
and  arbitrary  reversals  of  the  will  of  the  majority  will  end 
in  anart;hy  and  despotism.  This  is  a  burning  question,  not 
only  in  Georgia,  but  in  New  York.  It  is  that  government 
for  the  people  shall  be  by  the  people.  [Cheers.]  No  mat- 
ter how  grave  the  questions  which  absorb  the  Puritans' 
attention  or  engross  their  time,  the  permanence  of  their 
solution  rests  upon  a  pure  ballot.     [Applause.] 

The  telegraph  brings  us  this  evening  the  announcement 
of  the  death  of  Henry  W.  Grady.  We  forget  all  differ- 
ences of  opinion,  and  remember  only  his  chivalry,  patriot- 
ism, and  genius.  He  was  the  leader  of  the  new  South,  and 
died  in  the  great  work  of  impressing  its  marvellous  growth 
and  national  inspirations  upon  the  willing  ears  of  the  North. 
Upon  this  platform  and  before  this  audience  three  years  ago 
he  commanded  the  attention  of  the  country  and  won  uni- 
versal fame.  [Applause.]  Kis  death  in  the  meridian  of 
his  powers  and  the  hopefulness  of  his  mission,  at  the  criti- 
cal period  of  the  removal  for  ever  of  all  misunderstandings 
and  differences  between  all  sections  of  the  Republic,  is  a 
national  calamity.  New  York  mingles  her  tears  with  those 
of  his  kindred,  and  offers  to   his  memory  the  tribute  of  her 


366  CHAUNCEY   MITCHELL   DEPEW 

profoundcst  admiration   for    his   talents  and   achievements. 
[Applause.] 

Cheap  and  rapid  transportation  has  quickly  solved  the 
problem  of  our  agricultural  and  industrial  development,  and 
promoted  an  internal  commerce  which  in  volume  and  value 
has  no  parallel.  The  sixteenth-century  fever  for  gold  and 
the  fabled  El  Dorado,  which  explored  unknown  seas  and 
discovered  new  continents,  is  again  burning  in  the  veins  of 
the  nations,  not  for  treasure,  but  to  find  outlets  for  over- 
crowded populations.  Great  Britain  and  Germany,  Italy 
and  France,  Portugal  and  Belgium,  are  pushing  with  mad 
haste  and  nineteenth-century  equipment  into  the  heart  of 
Africa  and  upon  the  islands  of  the  ocean.  The  American 
Republic,  amply  territoried  and  content,  superbly  prepared 
and  alert,  has  in  these  conditions  boundless  opportunities. 
[Cheers.]  The  great  Exhibition  of  1892  will  teach  the  world 
our  resources,  and  the  cruisers  and  ships  of  our  navy  and 
marine  will  carry  our  flag  and  bear  our  commerce  to  feed 
and  furnish  machinery  and  fabrics  for  those  modern  colonists, 
city  founders,  and  State  builders  during  their  period  of 
march,  settlement,  and  development.  [Loud  and  prolonged 
cheering.] 


THE  BEGGARS  OF  THE  SEA 

[Speech  of  Cliaiincey  M.  Depew  at  the  fifth  annual  banquet  of  the  Hol- 
land Society  of  New  York,  January  10,  1890.  Robert  B.  Roosevelt,  Act- 
ing President  of  the  Society,  was  in  the  chair.  The  toast  to  which  Mr. 
Depew  responded  was  "  The  Beggars  of  the  Sea."] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — You  have  listened 
to  the  most  eminent  clergyman  [Henry  Van  Dyke,  D.  D.] 
of  the  Holland  faith  we  have  in  New  York.  You  have  heard 
the  most  famous  civil-service  reformer  [Theodore  Roosevelt] 
in  the  United  States.  Religion,  which  teaches  the  possible 
in  the  next  world  ;  and  civil-service  reform,  which  teaches 
the  impossible  in  this.  [Laughter.]  Each  of  them  has 
given  us  his  doctrine  and  prophecy.  We  are  equally  ortho- 
dox on  their  creeds,  and  wish  our  faith  was  as  firm  in  the 
forecast  of  the  Reformer  as  it  is  in  the  promises  of  the  Rev- 
erend Doctor.     [Renewed  laughter.] 


THE    HbXlGARS   OF   THK    SKA  367 

The  clergyman  who  stated  that  1  always  took  the  middle 
of  the  train  was  not  enough  of  a  railroad  man  to  understand 
the  location  of  a  private  car.  [Increased  laughter.J  As  a 
clergyman  he  usually  occupied  the  upper  berth.  [Great 
laughter.]  A  private  car  is  always  at  the  end  of  the  train. 
[Laughter  and  applause.] 

This  is  the  largest  collection  of  Dutchmen  ever  gathered 
on  Manhattan  Island  since  the  army  of  Peter  Stuyvesant 
met  to  repel  the  incursion  of  the  English  and  the  Yankee. 
It  resembles  Stuyvesant's  army,  because  it  is  more  able 
to  eat  than  to  fight.  [Great  laughter.]  My  friend  says, 
"  Thank  God  for  that !  "  He  has  taken  every  one  of  the 
courses  [continued  laughter],  and  his  family  physician  will 
get  the  benefit.     [Laughter  and  applause.] 

The  peculiarity  about  the  Dutchman  which  distinguishes 
him  from  all  the  other  nations,  and  especially  from  the 
Yankee,  is  that  he  minds  his  own  business,  and  that,  so  far 
as  he  can,  he  prevents  any  other  fellow  from  knowing  any- 
thing about  his  business.  [Laughter.]  It  is  that  which  has 
given  him  in  the  past  the  distinguished  place  of  the  leader 
of  civilization,  the  arbiter  of  the  destinies  of  nations  and  the 
preserver  of  the  liberties  of  mankind.     [Great  applause.] 

For  the  purpose  of  minding  his  own  business,  and  of  pre- 
venting any  other  man  from  interfering  with  his  business, 
thousands  of  years  ago  he  settled  in  the  Swamps  of  the 
Batavian  Islands,  thinking  that,  if  there  was  nothing  in  his 
home  to  tempt  the  invader,  he  might  be  permitted  to  work 
out  his  own  destiny. 

He  did  not  settle  there  to  lead  a  life  of  seclusion  and  of 
ease,  but  to  live  alone  with  his  kindred,  because  he  knew 
that,  freed  from  the  bigotry,  fanaticism,  and  ignorance  of 
the  nations  around  him,  he  could  cultivate  his  intellect  by 
founding  the  university  and  the  common  school,  secure  free- 
dom and  enlightenment  of  conscience  by  tolerating  churches 
of  every  creed,  and  secure  a  home  surrounded  with  all  the 
comforts  of  life,  and  beautified  and  adorned  with  true  hospi- 
tality and  all  the  virtues  and  the  purity  of  the  family. 
[Great  applause.] 

A  Dutchman  is  distinguished  beyond  all  other  peoples 
who  ever  lived  by  his  staying  power.  Whether  he  sits  at  a 
feast  or  serves  in  a  municipal  council,  in  a  public  office,  in 


368  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL   DEPEW 

a  syndicate,  or  in  a  bank,  he  stays  there.  [Laughter.]  The 
whole  power  of  the  Roman  world  was  concentrated  to 
drive  him  from  the  Swamps,  and  the  Roman  world  recog- 
nized his  valor,  and  said  :  "If  you  will  give  us  a  body- 
guard we  will  grant  to  you  your  liberty."  [Applause.] 
And  the  Batavian  body-guard  was  the  symbol  of  valor  and 
heroism  for  the  Roman  legions.      [Continued  applause.] 

The  hordes  of  barbarian  warriors  who  came  from  the 
wilds  of  the  forest  of  Germany,  sweeping  over  all  Roman 
civilization,  were  hurled  back  again  and  again  by  the  fierce 
bravery  of  an  impassable  barrier,  the  Batavians,  whom  they 
could  not  conquer.     [Great  applause.] 

Thermopylae  rings  down  the  ages  ;  but  what  is  it  ?  It  is 
the  story  of  the  courage  and  patriotism  of  a  noble  band, 
which  has  been  the  inspiration  of  centuries.  The  Ten 
Thousand  at  Marathon,  what  were  they  ?  They  were 
patriots  fighting  for  a  day  for  their  nationality,  and  their 
example  has  inspired  men  to  die  for  their  country  during 
succeeding  generations.  But  the  Dutch — what  were  they  ? 
Struggling,  not  for  hours,  not  for  a  day,  but  for  eighty 
years  against  one  third  of  the  world,  to  preserve  civil  and 
religious  liberty  for  all  mankind.     [Loud  and  long  cheering.] 

William  the  Silent,  John  of  Barneveld,  and  William  III 
stood  guardians  upon  all  that  had  been  received  from  the 
past  which  was  precious  to  humanity,  and  they  preserved  to 
posterity  all  that  constitutes  the  intellectual,  civil  and  re- 
ligious freedom  of  the  people  of  Europe  and  the  Republic 
of  the  United  States.     [Continued  applause.] 

It  was  a  Dutch  navigator  who  got  nearer  the  North  Pole, 
in  his  efforts  to  discover  the  Northwest  Passage,  than  any 
man  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  had  reached.  When 
the  Pope's  bull  had  given  away  the  South  American  and 
the  North  American  continents,  it  was  a  Dutchman  who 
took  the  bull  by  the  horns,  sailed  around  Cape  Horn,  and 
added  the  East  Indian  possessions  to  the  Batavian  territory. 
[Great  applause.] 

The  glory  of  the  Dutch  is  that  they  stood  firm  and  un- 
dismayed at  a  period  in  the  history  of  nations  when  all  the 
powers  of  darkness,  supplemented  by  all  the  powers  of  the 
visible  Church  and  of  the  State  commanded  by  a  sovereign 
who   controlled   almost  the   whole   of   the   civilized    world, 


THE    BEGGARS   OF   THE   SEA  369 

opposed  them.  That  sovereign,  thus  backed,  thus  sup- 
ported,  said  to  the  Dutchman:  "Surrender  your  liberty 
to  my  autocracy,  surrender  your  reh'gion  to  my  dogma,  and 
you  shall  be  free  from  persecution.  If  you  resist  my 
autocracy,  if  you  deny  my  dogma,  then  will  your  cities  be 
sacked,  your  country  ravaged,  your  old  men  murdered,  your 
young  men  tortured,  and  your  women  dishonored  ;  "  and 
the  Dutchman  said  :  "  I  accept  all  these  dangers,  rather  than 
fetter  my  conscience  and  lose  my  liberty."  [Loud  and 
continued  applause.] 

You  may  search  the  histories  of  the  peoples  from  the  be- 
ginning of  recorded  time,  and  there  is  nothing  in  the  efforts 
made  by  man  to  preserve  the  precious  principles  which 
make  life  worth  the  living  which  equals  the  eighty  years' 
fight  of  the  Dutch  against  the  whole  world  for  the  liberties 
of  which  we  are  the  inheritors.     [Renewed  cheers.] 

In  that  fight  the  Beggars  of  the  Sea  cut  the  dikes,  and, 
sailing  over  their  rich  farms  upon  the  ocean,  rescued  Ley- 
den.  In  that  fight  the  Beggars  of  the  Sea  defeated  the 
Spanish  armada,  and  saved  civilization  for  modern  times. 
In  that  fight  the  Beggars  of  the  Sea  created  a  republic 
which  had  in  it  the  federal  principle  adopted  by  the  United 
States  and  a  declaration  largely  copied  by  Jefferson  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.     [Loud  cheering.] 

Whenever  I  state  these  things,  as  I  do  as  a  "  Huguenot 
Dutchman  "  at  the  New  England  Society  [laughter],  they 
make  the  same  impression  upon  the  audience  as  my  family 
physician  says  that  a  prescription  to  a  hard  drinker  pro- 
duced upon  him  when  he  told  him  to  take  milk  for  break- 
fast, milk  for  lunch,  and  milk  for  dinner.  He  met  him  the 
next  morning,  and  said  :  "  How  are  you  ?"  Said  he:  "  I 
am  not  feeling  very  well  ;  the  milk  corroded  on  my  chest  !  " 
[Renewed  laughter.] 

Whenever  you  find  a  State  in  wiiicli,  under  the  conditions 
of  our  rapid  American  development,  there  is,  first,  the 
church,  then  the  common  school,  then  the  university,  then 
villages  and  cities  and  mills  and  commerce— the  progress, 
the  energy,  the  growth,  the  prosperity,  that  is  Yankee. 
But  the  university  and  the  common  school  which  educates 
the  children  to  understand  and  maintain  it  all,  that  is 
Dutch  !  [Applause.] 
24 


370  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

Where  you  see  the  genius  of  trade  making  the  wilderness 
a  garden  and  the  watercourse  resound  with  the  hum  of  busy 
industry,  that  is  Yankee.  Where  you  see  coming  from  the 
church  of  the  Catholic,  from  the  synagogue  of  the  Jew, 
from  the  meeting-house  of  the  Episcopalian,  the  Methodist, 
the  Baptist,  the  Presbyterian,  or  the  Unitarian,  the  people 
who,  while  worshipping  according  to  their  own  ideas,  recog- 
nize the  right  of  all  men  to  follow  the  dictates  of  their  own 
consciences,  that  is  Dutch.      [Applause.] 

The  Dutchman  liberalized  the  Puritan,  taught  him  the 
merits  of  a  universal  education,  showed  him  what  the 
common  school  and  religious  tolerance  could  do,  and  after 
hard  work  upon  him  for  thirteen  years  transformed  him 
from  a  Puritan  to  a  Pilgrim,  and  then  sent  him  forth  to 
build  states  and  to  regulate  the  business  of  other  men. 
To-day,  in  these  United  States,  when  there  is  progress  of 
commerce  and  promotion  of  "  schemes,"  when  there  is 
building  of  railroads  and  founding  of  trust  companies,  when 
there  are  operations  and  enterprises  upon  credit  either 
within  or  beyond  the  possibility  to  respond  on  pay-day,  the 
Yankee  is  the  creator  and  motive  power.  But  the  bank 
which  never  fails,  the  banking-house  which  stands  the 
financial  storm,  the  trust  company  which  resists  the  attack, 
the  institutions  which  prevent  bankruptcy,  and  keep  up 
credit  and  promote  the  restoration  of  business  prosperity, 
they  are  controlled  and  managed  by  Dutch.  [Renewed 
applause  and  cheers.] 


CITIZENS  OF  THE  WORLD 

[Speech  of  Chauncey  INI.  Depew  at  the  banquet  of  the  St.  Patrick's 
CkiVj,  New  York  City,  March  17,  1893.  Edwanl  R.  McCall  presided  al 
the  banquet.  The  "twenty-first  Irish  speech,"  alhided  to  by  Mr. 
Depew,  at  the  opening  of  his  address,  was  made  by  him  before  this  Club 
three  years  previously.] 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen: — On  my  twenty-first 
birthday  as  an  Irishman  I  spoke  to  you.  I  have  been 
speaking  to  the  loyal  Sons  of  St.  Patrick  for  many  }'ears.  I 
believe  you  all  come  from  Ireland.  [Laughter.]  I  once 
had   an  Irish  ancestor,  and  the  thing  he  considered  most 


CITIZKXS    OF    Till-;    WORLD  ^71 

was  his  brogue.  S.iid  he  :  "  If  1  sliould  lose  that  brownie,  I 
would  be  obliL,^ed  to  retire  from  jjublic  life."  A  quiet  man 
was  that  Irish  ancestor  of  miur.  lie  li\ed  in  a  iui<;iilj()r- 
hood  where  no  one  but  hini.^elf  was  Irish,  yet  lie  doniin.ited 
[laughter],  he  held  all  the  elective  offices  in  the  county,  and 
when  he  had  patronage  to  distribute  he  gave  his  country, 
men  as  much  as  possible.  He  believed  in  the  good  old 
Irish  doctrine  that  "  charity  begins  at  home."  He  could 
roll  his  tongue  in  a  way  that  would  make  these  shamrocks 
turn  green  with  envy.  He  had  that  brogue,  that  immortal 
brogue  which  gives  eloquence  to  speech,  piquancy  to  wit, 
and  is  a  most  indomitable  foil  for  getting  out  of  a  dilemma. 
If  that  ancestor  of  mine  had  only  given  to  me  his  brogue, 
I  would  have  been  Mayor  of  this  town.     [Laughter.] 

I  had  to  register  last  fall.  Not  so  much  for  the  purpose 
of  voting,  for  the  election  was  an  unimportant  affair,  but  to 
perform  my  duties  as  an  American  citizen.  [Laughter.] 
The  registry  office  was  only  a  few  feet  from  my  door,  and 
yet  the  registry  clerk  had  never  heard  of  me.  Such  is  fame 
in  a  great  city.  There  was  an  Irish  reporter  around,  and 
he  wrote  all  about  it,  and  put  in  the  mouth  of  the  clerk 
as  rich  a  brogue  as  could  be  found  in  Tipperary.  When  I 
read  that  brogue  in  the  paper  next  morning,  I  said  that 
registry  clerk  was  destined  for  high  distinction  in  this  State. 
The  next  day  he  sent  his  affidavit  to  the  newspapers  that 
he  never  had  a  brogue  at  all.  There  is  no  future  for  that 
man  in  this  world.  [Laughter.]  Then  a  Saxon  Democrat 
wrote  an  editorial  in  which  he  said  I  was  trying  to  ridicule 
the  Irish. 

The  Irishman  is  a  citizen  of  the  world.  He  is  the  only 
citizen  of  the  world.  The  conditions  at  home  have  made 
him  a  universal  solvent  of  the  unity  of  the  races.  No 
tyranny  is  able  to  destroy  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  life 
of  the  Irish  man  and  woman.  [Applause.]  The  Irish- 
woman is  a  home  ruler.  Every  married  Irishman  has  learned 
that  from  his  wife  ;  and  every  unmarried  Irishman  has 
learned  it  from  his  mother.  The  Irishman  adapts  himself 
to  where  he  is.  In  France  he  is  a  Frenchman  ;  in  Italy  an 
Italian  ;  but  not  in  New  York.  [Laughter.]  In  the 
United  States  he  is  an  American  of  Americans.  The  world 
is  interested   in  the  martial  valor  of  Ireland,  and  she  takes 


372  CHAUNCEY   MITCHELL   DEPEW 

an  interest  in  the  woes  of  Ireland,  because  the  Irishman  has 
taught  the  world  that  Ireland  deserves  better  than  she  has 
received.  It  was  the  success  of  the  American  Revolution 
which  moved  the  soul  of  Grattan.  Then  came  O'Connell, 
the  child  of  the  American  Revolution,  and  last  came  that 
genius  for  organization,  who  united  the  Irish  party  and 
divided  the  British  party  in  twain.  The  flower  and  fruitage 
of  one  hundred  years  of  Irish  statesmanship  was  in  Charles 
Stewart  Parnell.  [Applause,  cries  of  "  You're  right,  Mr. 
Depew,"  and  several  dissenting  voices.]  There  are  grounds 
on  which  we  Irishmen  may  differ.  [Laughter  and  applause.] 
Why  should  Great  Britain  be  so  angry  because  Ireland 
wants  home  rule,  and  is  likely  to  get  it  ?  Home  rule  is  the 
genius  of  American  institutions.  The  English  say  that  the 
Irish  cannot  govern  themselves,  yet  all  the  world  over  the 
Irishman  is  a  success.  He  lands  as  an  immigrant  without 
a  dollar,  and  in  a  few  years  he  owns  corner  lots  in  Fifth 
Avenue.  It  takes  many  years  for  a  foreigner  to  become  an 
American  citizen,  yet  in  six  months  an  Irishman  is  a  voter. 
He  is  an  Alderman  the  second  year,  and  in  the  fifth  year 
he  is  in  the  Legislature,  [Laughter.]  His  children  become 
judges  and  hold  high  office,  to  the  satisfaction  not  only  of 
their  own  countrymen  but  also  to  the  constituency  who 
place  them  in  office.  After  the  Commons  have  passed  a 
bill  for  Home  Rule,  and  the  House  of  Lords  has  defeated 
it,  the  friends  of  Home  Rule  must  look  to  America.  The 
United  States  has  been  the  treasury  of  Home  Rule.  For 
its  ultimate  success  Home  Rule  depends  upon  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. Let  us  say  to  Mr.  Redmond  and  his  associates  that 
we  respect  them  ;  but,  from  our  point  of  view,  what  Mr. 
Gladstone  wants  to  accomplish  is  what  the  Irish  people 
want ;  and  that  any  man  who  is  false  to  that  is  a  traitor  to 
his  country.  [Applause.]  Full  of  the  vigor  of  youth,  full 
of  the  strength  of  manhood,  full  of  the  wisdom  of  old  age, 
Gladstone  is  struggling  on  for  justice  to  Ireland  and  for 
Home  Rule.     [Long  and  continued  applause.] 


THE    MUTATIONS   OF   TIMK  373 


THE  MUTATIONS  OF  TIME 

[Speech  of  Chaunccy  I\I.  Depew  at  a  banquet  given  in  his  honor  l>y 
the  Lotos  CUib,  New  York  City,  Februarj-  22,  1.S96.  l-rank  R.  Ivawrcnce, 
President  of  the  Chib,  presided,  and  introduced  IMr.  Dcpew  as  fol- 
lows :  "  I  find  I  have  two  or  three  difTeniit  and  inconsistent  spcrrlus 
floating  about  in  my  uiind,  and  I  am  uot  dear  as  to  which  to  make. 
But  I  am  minded  to  propose  briefly  the  health  of  our  guest  in  such  terms 
as  shall  lead  to  a  1)rief,  modest  and  altogether  decorous  reply  [laughlcr], 
on  his  part,  without  levity,  and  thus  terminate  the  proceedings.  You 
may  perhaps  think  that  it  is  quite  unnecessary  that  the  President  of  the 
Club  should  make  any  speech  on  this  occasion,  other  than  to  pronouiice 
the  name  of  our  guest  and  leave  the  rest  to  fate  and  to  you.  We  cele- 
brate to-night,  gentlemen,  two  typical  Americans.  We  commemorate 
to-day  the  Father  of  our  Country,  by  paying  our  tribute  of  affection  to 
Chauncey  M.  Depew.  [Applause.]  And  there  is  much  propriety  in  link- 
ing together  these  two  names,  for  as  one  represents  the  highest  type  of 
character  at  the  birth  of  our  country,  the  other  represents  its  oldest 
development  near  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century."] 

Mr.  President  AND  Gentlemen: — Lanf^uagc  i.s  inade- 
quate to  voice  my  appreciation  of  your  compliment. 
When  President  Harrison  tendered  to  me  the  position  of 
Secretary  of  State  as  the  successor  of  Mr.  Blaine,  a  member 
of  his  Cabinet  said  :  "  You  ought  to  take  the  office,  Mr. 
Depew,  even  if  to  do  so  you  have  to  surrender  the  positions 
of  trust  which  are  the  accumulations  of  a  lifetime  ;  while,  if 
General  Harrison  is  not  re-elected,  you  may  be  in  only  a 
few  months,  and  have  no  opportunity  to  gain  a  reputation 
or  fame  as  a  foreign  minister,  because  you  will  have  your 
name  on  that  list  of  Secretaries  of  State." 

A  reception  and  dinner  by  the  Lotos  Club  puts  the  re- 
cipient's name  on  a  noble  li.st  without  involving  any  sacrifice 
whatever.  [Applause.]  For  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  I 
have  been  a  member  of  this  Club,  and  the  recollections  of  the 
famous  men  whose  coming  has  made  famous  nights,  if  writ- 
ten, would  add  another  and  the  most  interesting  volume  to 
the  Nodes  AjubrosiaiKE.  The  Lotos  has  no  politics,  no  creed 
and  no  dogma.  [Applause.]  It  stands  for  the  catholicity 
of  brains  and  the  universality  of  good-fellowship.  It  is  a 
citizen  of  the  world  and  claims  fellow.ship  with  men  and 
women  of  every  race  and  nation  who  possess  these  qualities. 


374  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

Here  have  come  from  the  department  of  music  Gilbert 
and  SuHivan,  Offenbach,  Paderewski,  and  the  De  Reszkes ; 
from  fiction,  Canon  Kingsley  and  Conan  Doyle,  and  Wilkie 
Collins  and  Mark  Twain ;  from  poetry,  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  and  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  ;  from  history,  James  An- 
thony Froude  and  others  ;  from  journalism,  Whitelaw  Reid 
and  Charles  A.  Dana  and  Murat  Halstead  ;  from  statesman- 
ship, in  its  best  and  purest  expression,  William  M.  Evarts  ; 
from  the  stage,  Irving,  Barrett  and  Booth  ;  and  from  the 
army,  General  Grant.  [Applause.]  But  w^hy  prolong  the 
list  ?  Bohemia  embraces  all  who  participate  in  the  cultiva- 
tion of  art  and  the  advancement  of  the  truth,  from  Shake- 
speare to  his  humblest  interpreter,  and  from  the  writer 
whose  name  is  writ  large  on  the  tablets  of  fame  to  the  one 
who  anonymously  delivers  his  sermon  day  by  day.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

In  recalling  the  past  and  its  delightful  memories,  we  can- 
not help  both  lamenting  and  rejoicing  in  the  evanescence  of 
fame — rejoicing  because,  except  for  the  disappearance  of 
those  who  occupied  the  stage,  there  would  be  no  room  for 
the  rest  of  us.     [Laughter.] 

When  we  entertained  Canon  Kingsley,  "Hypatia"  and 
"  Westward  Ho  "  were  the  models  of  the  schools  and  col- 
leges, the  conversation  of  the  dinner-table  and  the  ornaments 
of  the  drawing-room.  Now  only  the  student  reads  the 
works  of  Charles  Kingsley.  Offenbach  brought  to  us  opera 
bouffe  and  Tostee.  Never  was  there  such  excitement  about 
the  lyric  stage.  The  American  people  were  captured  by 
being  shocked.  [Laughter.]  Everybody  went  to  see  Tostee 
to  be  shocked,  and  her  suggestive  singing  was  denounced 
from  the  pulpits  and  filled  the  newspapers  with  indignant 
editorials  and  communications.  Guilbert  comes  here  and 
sings  songs  on  a  moral  plane  as  much  below  Tostee  as  Tostee 
was  below  Patti,  and  the  American  press  and  public  paid 
little  heed  and  cared  little  about  it.  Is  it  because  we  have 
grown  worse,  or  better  ?  It  is  because  we  have  become 
better  and  stronger  as  well  as  more  cultured. 

Offenbach  found  us  in  a  provincial  condition  where  the 
professor  of  virtue  is  a  peeper  at  vice.  [Laughter.]  Guil- 
bert found  us  in  the  cosmopolitan  state  where  we  might  for 
a  while  tolerate  filth  and  vulgarity,  if  it  was  the  highest  art; 


THE    MUTATIONS    OK    TIMK  375 

but  unless  it  was  the  higliest  art,  we  would  stand  it  out  and 
starve  it  out;  and  if  it  was  the  highest  art,  we  would  sjieed- 
ily  demand  that  ait  should  not  be  degraded  and  insulted 
by  depraved  uses.  When  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  were  wel- 
comed, their  tuneful  melodies  were  the  f(jlk-lorc  of  the 
country.  We  had  "  Pinafore  "  banged  at  us  on  the  piano 
before  breakfast  [laughter]  ;  thundered  at  us  by  the  bands 
on  the  streets,  we  were  tortured  by  the  hand-organ  playing 
it,  our  friends  humming  it  even  in  church,  and  rasping  friends 
whistling  it  [applause];  it  was  the  song  and  the  nuisance 
which  spared  neither  age  nor  sex  nor  condition  in  life, 
[Laughter.]  There  is  not  a  gentleman  present  to-night  who 
could  whistle  or  sing  a  bar  of  "Pinafore."  Ikit  there  is  a 
general  appreciation  and  understanding  of  the  noblest 
works  of  the  greatest  composers  which  at  that  time  had 
scarcely  an  existence  in  this  country. 

At  the  time  of  the  craze  for  Kingsley's  works  I  was  in 
England,  on  the  coast  where  the  plot  of  one  of  his  great 
novels  is  laid.  A  stately  hall  of  Norman  ancestry,  Vigrande 
dame  presiding  grandly  at  the  most  hospitable  of  boards, 
and  a  guest  remarking  upon  the  beauty  of  the  situation  and 
the  invigorating  breeze  from  the  sea,  the  grand  dame  said  : 
"Yes,  all  that  is  true,  and  makes  this  place  attractive  beyond 
almost  any  other.  It  has,  however,  one  drawback.  W'hen 
alone  at  night  we  cannot  help  thinking  that  only  the  At- 
lantic Ocean  separates  us  from  the  dreadful  American  sav- 
ages."    [Applause.] 

Provincialism  and  isolation  from  the  world  produce  mag- 
nificent enthusiasm  ;  the  effort  of  higher  civilization  and 
universal  knowledge  is  to  repress  it.  Enthusiasm  is  like 
the  thunder  and  the  lightning,  which  clears  the  atmosphere 
and  gives  new  vigor  to  life.  In  lamenting  the  disappear- 
ance of  its  manifestations,  I  often  wonder  if  the  passion  is 
lost.  I  saw  the  Seventh  Regiment  march  down  Broadway 
to  protect  the  Capitol  at  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  War 
and  receive  a  popular  ovation  which  set  the  heart  beating 
and  the  blood  throbbing  so  that  in  the  ecstasy  of  the  hour  it 
was  difTficult  to  breathe  or  live.  [Applause.]  I  felt  as  a 
boy  a  wild  and  contagious  feeling  there  was  for  Henry  Clay. 
We  have  all  of  us  been  carried  along  on  the  waves  of 
emotion  which  after  the  end  of  the  Civil  strife  swept  against 


376  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL   DEPEW 

the  unmoved  and  immovable  figure  of  General  Grant. 
[Applause.] 

But  where  are  our  enthusiasms  of  to-day  ?  We  are  in  the 
Presidential  year,  the  year  of  all  others  for  idols  and  idol- 
worship  [laughter],  the  year  Avhen  the  politician  becomes 
a  statesman,  and  the  statesman  becomes  endowed  in  the 
popular  imagination  with  supreme  qualities  ;  and  yet  the 
American  people  are  calmly  analyzing  instead  of  frescoing, 
they  are  doubting  instead  of  accepting  without  question  as 
prophet,  sage,  leader  and  saviour  and  chosen  favorite,  and 
they  are  subjecting  them  to  all  the  frightful  processes  of  the 
cathode  ray.  [Applause,]  All  these  are  unquestionably 
the  results  of  more  universal  education,  of  the  universal 
reading  of  the  newspapers,  and  of  electric  touch  from  day 
to  day  with  all  the  world. 

And  yet,  without  lamenting  the  good  old  times,  I  believe 
that  a  people  should  be  stirred  at  least  once  in  a  generation 
by  a  Peter  the  Hermit  enthusiasm,  which  sinks  the  com- 
mercial considerations,  that  now  control  all  the  transactions 
of  life  and  sacrifice  everything  for  an  idea  or  a  name.  It  is 
that  which  makes  patriotism  and  patriots  ;  it  is  that  which 
creates  heroes  and  statesmen  !     [Applause.] 

They  are  carried  to  the  heights  where  they  lead,  and  the 
multitude  follows  as  much  by  the  uplifting  applause  and 
inspiration  of  the  people  whose  enthusiasm  condenses  in 
them  as  by  their  own  superior  genius  and  acquirements. 
[Hearty  applause.] 

When  Governor  Seymour,  one  of  the  finest  types  of  the 
American  gentleman  that  ever  lived,  was  defeated  in  his 
last  race  to  succeed  himself  in  the  Gubernatorial  office,  I  met 
him  in  Albany  and  supposed,  because  I  had  been  six  weeks 
on  the  stump,  speaking  after  him  every  night,  and  attacking 
his  positions  and  himself  politically,  that  there  would  be,  as 
the  girl  said  about  herself  and  her  lover,  "  a  distance  and  at 
the  same  time  a  coolness  between  us."  [Laughter.]  But 
he  greeted  me  with  the  old-time  cordiality  and  then  said  : 
"You  are  a  young  man,  and  I  am  an  old  one;  you  have 
got  a  talent  for  public  life;  have  got  on  very  fast,  and  un- 
doubtedly can  make  a  career.  But  there  is  nothing  in  it. 
I  have  seen,  during  my  thirty  years  of  activity  in  politics, 
the  men  go  up  and  down  State  Street  to  the  Capitol  who 


THE    MUTATIONS    OF   TIME  377 

held  the  attention  of  the  people  iiiui  seemed  destined  to  be 
always  famous.  One  by  one  they  were  dropped  by  their 
party,  disappeared  from  public  view,  lost  touch  with  their 
business  or  profession,  and  died  in  obscurity  and  poverty. 
In  the  War  of  18 12,  there  were  three  men  who  performed 
signal  service  on  the  frontier,  and  the  State  so  appreciated 
their  deeds  that  the  Legislature  sent  a  special  commission 
to  bring  their  bodies  to  Albany,  and  the  remains  were  met 
there  by  all  there  was  of  power  and  authority  in  the  Empire 
State.  The  Governor,  the  judges,  the  State  officers  and 
the  Legislature  marched  in  procession  and  buried  them  in 
the  grounds  of  the  Capitol ;  and  now  no  one  knows  what 
part  of  the  Capitol  grounds  they  were  buried  in,  what  were 
their  names,  or  what  they  did."  In  building  the  new  Cap- 
itol,  their  remains  were  found. 

While  there  is  much  philosophy  and  infinite  truth  for  the 
average  man  in  the  old  Governor's  advice,  yet  there  are  ex- 
ceptions in  exceptional  times,  when  enthusiasm  should 
again   inspire  effort  and  fame  be  a  secondary  consideration. 

It  is  a  curious  trait  of  this  period  that  we  are  inclined  to 
take  nothing  seriously.  A  story  goes  further  than  an  argu- 
ment, and  a  joke  captures  more  than  a  speech.  It  matters 
not  whether  it  be  a  crisis  in  national  affairs,  a  critical  time 
in  finance,  a  disturbing  contention  in  the  church,  or  the 
varying  fortunes  of  party  leaders,  the  public  find  comfort 
somewhere  by  a  presentation  and  universal  acceptance  of  a 
humorous  or  ludicrous  side  of  the  situation.  We  apply  this 
process  in  the  humanizing  of  the  deified  heroes  of  the  past. 
To  hit  a  Populist  Senator  and  get  a  horizontal  view  of  a 
great  statesman,  they  tell  a  story  of  the  Senator  being  shaved 
by  a  colored  barber  at  the  Arlington  and  remarking  to  the 
barber :  "  Uncle,  you  must  have  had  among  your  customers 
many  of  my  distinguished  predecessors  in  the  Senate — many 
of  the  men  now  dead,  who  have  occupied  the  great  place 
which  I  fill?"  "  Yes,  sar,"  said  the  barber,  "  I'se  known 
most  all  of  dem ;  by  de  way,  Senator,  you  remind  me  of 
Dan'el  Webster,"  The  gratified  statesman  rose  in  his  chair, 
and  placing  his  fingers  upon  his  forehead  said  :  "  Is  it  my 
brow?  "  "  No,  boss,"  said  the  barber,  "  it  is  your  breath." 
[Laughter  and  applause.] 

And  yet  the  processes  of  humor  seem  to  have  destroyed 


378  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

wit.  Or  has  publicity  done  it  ?  We  hail  with  intense  de- 
light  the  autobiographies  which  give  us  table  gossip  of  the 
wits  of  preceding  generations  ;  we  treasure  their  epigrams 
and  their  mots  ;  but  now  when  every  newspaper,  even  the 
sedatest,  and  every  magazine,  even  the  most  solemn,  has  its 
humorous  column  or  chapter,  we  hear  no  more  epigrams, 
immortal  witticisms  or  new  and  embarrassing  presentations 
of  current  incidents,  either  in  society  or  at  the  dinner-table. 
What  are  the  Sydney  Smiths,  the  Douglas  Jerrolds,  the 
Tom  Hoods  and  the  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridans  doing 
now  ?  There  are  plenty  of  them  in  every  American  city  ; 
they  are  found  upon  newspapers  and  in  the  professions.  I 
think  it  is  the  spirit  of  commerce  again,  and  the  trail  of  the 
serpent  is  over  us  all.  [Laughter.]  Jokes  have  become 
marketable,  witticisms  command  a  high  price,  and  humor  is 
a  source  of  daily  livelihood. 

The  story  that  is  either  painfully  or  slowly  constructed 
from  the  breath  of  genius,  when  told  at  the  most  private 
of  dinners  to-night,  is  in  all  the  newspapers  to-morrow.  In 
other  times  the  author  would  have  been  a  welcome  guest 
everywhere,  in  order  that  there  might  be  heard  from  his  lips 
a  repetition  of  his  creation ;  but  now  he  is  either  a  writer 
and  cannot  afford  to  treat  his  friends  to  such  expensive  en- 
tertainments and  lose  the  authorship  or  the  dissipation  by 
publication  of  a  story  or  a  joke  ;  or  a  humorous  suggestion 
in  embryo  prevents  subsequent  processes  by  which  it  be- 
comes an  immortal  contribution  to  the  gayct}'  of  nations. 

I  do  not  know  why  you  should  have  selected  Washington's 
birthday  on  which  to  pay  me  this  honor  ;  there  is  no  re- 
semblance between  the  Father  of  his  Country  and  myself, 
unless  in  my  capacity  as  a  railroad  man  you  connect  me  with 
him,  from  his  first  venture  in  what  has  grown  to  be  a  great 
system  of  transportation,  because  Parson  Wccnis,  in  his 
delightful  and  simple  story  of  Washington's  life,  says  that 
when  a  small  boy  he  took  a  hack  at  the  cherry  tree. 
[Laughter.] 

This  February,  for  the  first  time,  both  Washington's  and 
Lincoln's  birthdays  have  been  made  legal  holidiiys.  Never 
since  the  creation  of  man  were  two  human  beings  so  unlike, 
so  nearly  extremes  or  opposed  to  each  other,  as  Washington 
and  Lincoln.     The  one  an  aristocrat  by  birth,  by  breeding 


THE    MUTATIONS   OK   TIMK  379 

and  association  ;  the  other  in  every  sense  and  by  every  sur- 
rounding a  Democrat.  As  the  richest  man  in  America,  a 
large  slaveholder,  the  possessor  of  an  enormous  landed 
estate  and  the  leader  and  representative  of  tlie  property  and 
the  culture  and  the  colleges  of  the  Colonial  period,  Wash- 
ington stood  for  the  conservation  and  preservation  of  law 
and  order.  He  could  be  a  revolutionist  and  pledge  his  hfe 
and  fortune  and  honor  for  the  principles  which  in  his  juilg- 
mcnt  safeguarded  the  rights  and  liberties  of  his  country. 
[Applause.]  But  in  the  construction  of  the  Republic  and 
in  the  formation  of  its  institutions,  and  in  the  critical  period 
of  experiment  until  they  could  get  in  working  order,  he 
gave  to  them  and  implanted  in  them  conservative  elements 
which  are  found  in  no  other  system  of  government.  And 
yet,  millionaire,  slaveholder,  and  aristocrat  in  its  best  sense, 
that  he  was,  all  his  life  ;  so  at  any  time  he  would  have  died 
for  the  immortal  principle  put  by  the  Puritans  in  their 
charter  adopted  in  the  cabin  of  the  "  Mayflower  "  and  re- 
enacted  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  of  the  equality 
of  all  men  before  the  law,  and  of  the  equal  opportunity  for 
all  to  rise,     [Applause.] 

Lincoln,  on  the  other  hand,  was  born  in  a  cabin  among 
that  class  known  as  poor  whites  in  slavesholding  times,  who 
held  and  could  hold  no  position,  and  whose  condition  was  so 
hopeless  as  to  paralyze  ambition  and  effort.  His  situation, 
so  far  as  his  surroundings  were  concerned,  had  considerable 
mental  but  little  moral  improvement  by  the  removal  to  In- 
diana, and  subsequently  to  Illinois.  Anywhere  in  the  Old 
World  a  man  born  amid  such  an  environment  and  teachings, 
and  possessed  of  unconquerable  energy,  and  ambition  and 
the  greatest  powers  of  eloquence  and  constructive  states- 
manship, would  have  been  a  socialist  and  the  leader  of  a 
social  revolt.  He  might  have  been  an  Anarchist.  His  one 
ambition  would  have  been  to  break  the  crust  above  him 
and  shatter  it  to  pieces.  He  would  see  otherwise  no  op- 
portunity for  himself  and  his  fellows  in  social  or  political  or 
professional  life,  l^ut  Lincoln  attained  from  the  log  cabin 
of  the  poor  white  in  the  wilderness  the  same  position  which 
George  Washington  reached  from  his  palatial  mansion  and 
baronial  estate  on  the  Potomac.  He  made  the  same  fight, 
unselfishly,  patriotically  and  grandly  for  the  preservation  of 


38c  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

the  Republic,  that  Washington  had  made  for  its  creation 
and  foundation. 

Widely  as  they  are  separated,  these  two  heroes  of  the  two 
great  crises  of  our  national  life  stand  together  in  represent- 
ing solvent  powers,  inspiring  processes  and  the  hopeful  op- 
portunities of  American  liberty.  The  one  coming  from  the 
top,  and  the  other  from  the  bottom,  to  the  Presidency  of 
the  United  States,  the  leadership  of  the  people,  the  build- 
ino-  up  of  government  and  the  reconstruction  of  States,  they 
superbly  illustrate  the  fact  that  under  our  institutions  there 
is  neither  place  nor  time  for  the  Socialist  or  the  Anarchist, 
but  there  is  a  place  and  always  a  time,  notwithstanding  the 
discouragements  of  origin  or  of  youth,  for  grit,  pluck,  am- 
bition, honesty  and  brains.     [Applause.] 

Gentlemen,  in  the  good  fellowship  of  the  hour,  in  the 
genial  encouragement  which  reckons  every  man  for  what 
he  is  and  not  for  what  he  has,  in  the  glorious  associations 
and  atmosphere  of  Bohemia,  I  wash  you  all  long  life  and 
happiness,  and  the  Lotos  immortality.  [Applause,  long 
continued.] 


A  SENATORIAL   FORECAST 

[Speech  of  Chauncey  M.  Depew  at  a  banquet  given  in  his  honor  by 
the  Lotos  Club,  New  York  City,  March  ii,  1899,  on  the  occasion  of 
his  election  as  United  States  Senator.  The  President  of  the  Club,  Mr. 
Frank  R.  Lawrence,  presided,  and  said  in  introducing  Dr.  Depew  :  "To 
introduce  him  properl}^  to  this  assembly  one  needs  a  new  vocabulary. 
For  twenty-five  years  lie  has  been  a  member  of  the  Club,  and  during  most 
of  that  time  he  has  stood  among  the  foremost  orators  of  the  day,  equall}' 
at  home  with  all  subjects,  '  from  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe,'  pre- 
eminent upon  the  jjolitical  platform,  in  the  academic  forum,  and  at  the 
table  after  dinner,  where  we  have  best  loved  to  hear  him.  We  recognize 
in  his  election  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  a  sign  of  promise  for 
the  future  and  an  event  which  increases  the  prestige  of  that  ancient  and 
honorable  body.  In  him  we  shall  have  no  mute,  inglorious  Senator  ; 
sitting  to  represent  the  Empire  State  in  that  chamber,  wherein  their  day 
the  greatest  and  best  of  her  sons  have  sat ;  we  know  that  his  voice  will 
ring  loud  and  clear  tipon  all  questions  where  public  welfare  or  national 
honor  are  concerned,  and  we  esteem  it  fortunate  that  for  the  next  six 
years  the  weight  which  always  attaches  to  his  utterances  will  be  en- 
hanced by  the  position  of  authority  from  which  they  will  be  delivered. 
We  wish  him  all  happiness  and  success  in  his  new  career,  and  may  the 


A   SENATORIAL    F0K1-:CAST  38 1 

Senate,  throuj^li  the  accession  of  sncli  nicn  as  St  iiator  Depew,  grow  more 
and  more  representative  of  the  best  intellect  and  the  hiKhest  pnrjx.ses  of 
the  nation  becoming  the  seat  of  most  intelligent  discussion  of  pul>lic 
questions  and  the  source  of  the  wisest  legislation.") 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  :— Permit  mc  frankly 
to  say  I  love  your  greeting  and  your  cheers.  Any  man 
would  be  insensible  to  ambition  and  its  gratification  who 
was  not  proud  of  the  fact  that  his  fellow-citizens  had  selected 
him  for  a  position  of  trust  and  grave  responsibility  in  their 
interests.  But  a  deeper-seated  and  tenderer  chord  is  touched 
when  men  of  all  parties  and  all  creeds  express  as  much 
pleasure  in  the  event  as  if  the  honor  had  come  to  one  of 
themselves.  The  situation  is  best  illustrated  by  a  personal 
incident — for,  by  your  favor,  this  is  a  personal  night.  When 
the  news  came  to  the  old  homestead  at  Peekskill  on  the  eve 
of  election-day  way  back  in  my  youth,  that  I  had  been 
elected  Secretary  of  State,  the  house  was  soon  surrounded 
by  a  shouting  multitude  with  banners,  bands  and  fireworks. 
My  old  Democratic  father,  who  was  too  sturdy  a  Democrat 
to  vote  for  his  Republican  son,  and  too  good  a  father  not  to 
rejoice  in  his  success,  embraced  the  boy  and  wept  for  joy. 
Those  tears  made  a  deeper  impression  and  a  more  memora- 
ble night  than  all  the  votes  dropped  in  the  ballot-box  which 
had  made  possible  the  event. 

The  famous  operatic  composers  had  different  methods  of 
getting  inspiration  for  their  immortal  compositions.  One 
could  not  write  the  score  unless  he  had  a  cat  upon  his 
shoulders.  There  are  in  his  symphonies  suggestions  of  an 
orchestra  which  everyone  of  us  born  in  the  country  recog- 
nizes as  the  familiar  strain  of  a  summer's  night.  Another 
could  stir  his  genius  best  at  the  billiard-table,  and  in  his 
refrains  is  heard  the  rattling  fire  of  the  ivory  balls.  While 
a  third,  by  walks  in  the  woods  and  communing  with  Nature, 
transferred  to  the  orchestra  and  chorus  the  sublime  secrets 
of  creation.  So  the  greetings  of  friends  are  individual  or 
universal,  are  within  limited  lines  or  impress  the  world.  The 
wild  and  contagious  enthusiasm  of  the  political  club  is 
marred  by  the  condition  inevitable  in  political  parties  of 
factional  division.  The  side  with  which  you  have  acted 
think  you  might  have  been  less  cordial  with  their  enemies  ; 
and  the  other  side  think  the  defect  in  your  character  is  your 


382  CHAUXCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

previous  association.  To  cross  that  Arctic  circle  and  bring 
them  together  rcc]uires  the  courage  and  skill  of  a  Kane  in 
his  boat  and  a  Nansen  on  his  sled,  or  an  Andree  in  his  bal- 
loon. In  the  social  club  are  the  divisions  of  cliques,  formed 
from  associations  of  birth,  fortune  or  income,  and  in  art  cir- 
cles the  isolation  is  best  proved  by  the  familiar  story  of 
Whistler,  who,  upon  being  complimented  as  being  with 
Velasquez  the  greatest  portrait  painter  of  all  ages,  answered  : 
"  Why  drag  in  Velasquez?"  Politicians  without  partisan- 
ship, artists  who  do  not  isolate  themselves,  preachers 
without  bigotry,  workaday  people  in  the  fields  of  journalism 
and  the  professions,  all  meet  in  common  brotherhood  with 
clear  minds  and  unvexed  judgments  within  the  walls  of 
liberal  Bohemia.  Bohemians  enjoy  the  world  and  the  fruits 
thereof,  and  take  pleasure  in  the  joy  which  the  world  can 
give  to  everybody. 

It  is  your  greeting,  so  representative,  so  sincere,  so  broad, 
which  emphasizes  the  belief  that  life  is  worth  the  living. 
New  York  has  had  United  States  Senators  famous  for  their 
eloquence,  for  their  statesmanship,  for  their  shrewdness  as 
politicians,  for  their  practical  ability  as  legislators,  and  for  the 
distinguished  services  which  they  have  rendered  not  only  to 
the  State  but  to  the  Nation.  None  of  us  remembers  a 
United  States  Senator  who  was,  by  his  associations,  his 
activities,  his  interests  and  his  characteristics,  a  representa- 
tive of  the  cosmopolitan  thought  and  ways  and  life  of  this 
metropolis  of  the  western  world.  The  tj-pe  is  familiar  to 
those  who  saw  in  public  life  in  Washington  President 
Chester  A.  Arthur.  The  typical  New  Yorker  is  rarely  if 
ever  born  here.  He  has  entered  the  gates  of  this  great  city 
seeking  his  fortune  with  the  swarms  who  are  ever  crowding 
through.  Many  fall  by  the  wayside,  or,  broken  and  disap- 
pointed, return  to  the  country.  A  few  bring  fortunes  with 
which  to  clean  out  Wall  Street,  and  go  back  home  shorn  of 
their  riches,  to  spend  their  lives  denouncing  the  wickedness 
of  the  money-sharks.  Others,  with  the  grit,  shrewdness  and 
indomitable  Americanism  which  they  have  brought  from  the 
granite  hills  of  New  England,  or  the  fertile  farms  of  the  West, 
or  the  plantations  of  the  South,  or  with  native  genius  for 
getting  on  which  has  carried  them  from  foreign  lands  to  our 
coasts,  fight  their  way  to  a  foothold  and  become  the  survival 


A   SliNATOKIAL    FOIH-XAST  383 

of  the  fittest.  In  the  ordinary  duties  of  life,  in  the  home, 
the  church,  or  industry,  they  do  not  differ  from  their  felh)\v- 
citizens  of  other  neii^hborhoods,  but  as  metropolitans  and 
cosmopolitans,  as  men  of  the  theatre,  of  the  clubs,  of  the 
charities,  of  the  great  national  and  international  interests 
which  centre  in  New  York,  they  are  New  Yorkers. 

I  shall  feel  it  one  of  the  greatest  pleasures  of  official  life 
in  Washington  if  every  one  of  these  men  and  women  who 
make  this  metropolis  what  it  is,  will  feel  that  in  the  Senate 
they  have  a  friend  who  understands  them  and  whom  they 
know.  There  is  no  place  where  human  nature  can  be 
studied  to  better  advantage,  or  public  opinion  be  more 
quickly  ascertained,  than  in  the  office  of  a  railroad  president. 
It  helps  the  railway  president  if  he  is  also  a  politician  and  a 
man  of  the  world.  The  experience  tends  to  cynicism  and 
cultivates  the  theory  which  gives  too  great  prominence  to 
the  influence  of  association  and  point  of  view  in  fixing 
creeds,  faiths,  churchmanship  and  partisanship.  The  vis- 
itor always  tries  to  make  the  president  believe  that  he  came 
for  some  other  purpose  than  the  real  object  of  his  mission. 
Why  men  beheve  they  can  succeed  better  in  what  they 
seek  by  this  sort  of  fraud,  is  a  mystery.  The  most  curious 
exhibit  is  the  man  of  many  millions,  who  pretends  that  he 
wishes  to  consult  you  in  regard  to  investments  in  the  secu- 
rities of  your  company,  and  ends  by  asking  for  a  pass. 

I  was  riding  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  parlor  car  with 
Mr.  Tilden,  while  he  was  Governor.  We  were  interrupted 
by  an  up-State  politician  informing  the  Governor  with  great 
indignation  that  in  the  selection  of  delegates  to  the  State 
Convention  which  was  to  send  delegates  to  the  National 
Convention  which  nominated  Mr.  Tilden  for  President, 
he  and  his  friends,  who  had  for  years  controlled  the 
organization  of  the  Democratic  party  in  the  county,  had 
been  beaten  by  the  pernicious  activity  and  malign  influ- 
ence of  the  freight  agent  of  the  New  York  Central  Rail- 
road in  that  district.  He  asked  the  Governor  if  he  did 
not  think  this  exercise  of  corporate  power  was  danger- 
ous to  the  liberties  of  the  country,  and  asked  that  an 
example  should  be  made  of  this  tool  of  monopoly  by  the 
Governor,  demanding  of  the  company  the  immediate  dis- 
charge of  the  freight  agent.     The  Governor  replied  that  he 


384  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL    DEPEW 

looked  with  alarm  upon  any  evidence  of  corporation  influ- 
ence in  politics,  and  if  he  found  such  to  be  the  case  in 
this  instance,  he  would  take  the  proper  steps,  through 
me,  whom  he  introduced,  to  check  and  punish  the  evil. 
The  politician  retired,  and  then  the  Governor  said  to  me: 
"  Do  you  know  this  employe  of  your  company  ?  "  I  said  : 
"  Only  as  one  of  the  most  intelligent  and  useful  men  in  the 
freight  service."  "  Well,"  said  the  Governor,  "  I  sent  for 
him  some  weeks  since  to  come  and  see  me,  and  in  the 
course  of  the  interview  formed  a  very  high  opinion  of  him." 
The  Governor  had  selected  him  to  perform  the  very  work  of 
which  the  excited  politician  complained,  and  this  aggres- 
sion of  corporate  power  did  not  alarm  the  Governor. 

Some  periods  of  national  life  are  so  commonplace  and 
parochial  that  they  afford  little  opportunity  for  useful  pub- 
lic service,  and  make  public  life  singularly  unattractive 
compared  with  the  progress  and  healthy  excitement  which 
can  be  found  in  business  and  in  the  professions.  There  are 
other  periods  when  public  life  is  a  pleasure  and  an  inspira- 
tion. Many  years  prior  to  1898  were  the  dull  days  of 
American  politics.  We  were  arguing  century-old  questions, 
measures  and  policies.  The  acute  currency  and  financial 
conditions,  and  the  campaign  of  1896,  were  distinctly  edu- 
cational, and  gave  an  impetus  not  felt  before  in  a  genera- 
tion to  national  study  and  thought.  The  last  year  has 
done  more ;  it  has  marvellously  elevated  the  plane  of 
national  thought,  and  enlarged  the  area  of  national  ques- 
tions. There  are  two  lines  of  Tennyson  wdiich  are  American 
beyond  the  dream  of  the  Poet-Laureate.     The  first  is: — 

"Better  fifty  years  of  Europe  than  a  cycle  of  Cathay." 

The  poet  referred  to  the  Europe  of  letters,  but  the  senti- 
ment superbly  describes  and  differenti9,tes  this  era  of  action. 
We  all  remember  the  general  training  days  of  the  fifties. 
The  contempt  and  ridicule  which  greeted  the  appearance  of 
the  training  and  manoeuvres  of  the  citizen  soldiers,  the  in- 
difference to  the  position  and  future  of  the  United  States, 
to  the  liberties  of  other  peoples,  and  the  commerce  of  the 
world,  which  starved  our  navy.  Even  the  Fourth  of  July 
lost  its  significance  and   became  a  revel,  and   not  a  sacra- 


A    SKNATOKIAL    FOKKCAST  3X5 

ment.  Upon  the  Island  of  Malta  the  Cross  and  the  Crescent 
fought  fiercely  for  the  control  of  Europe  for  a  century.  It 
was  a  battle  for  faith  and  immortality.  Upon  its  i.ssuc 
hung  the  fate  of  modern  civilization.  The  Cross  won,  and 
we  had  Christianity,  liberty,  humanity,  art  and  industry. 
Yesterday  the  citizen  soldiers  whom  wc  laughed  at  in  the 
fifties,  with  the  flag  representing  the  best  which  the  victory 
of  the  Cross  made  possible,  marched  in  serried  lines  over 
the  causeways  at  Malta  built  by  the  Crusaders,  and  beneath 
the  battlements  heroically  and  gloriously  defended  by  the 
Knights  of  St.  John.  The  martial  appearance  and  sol- 
dierly perfection  and  equipment  of  our  little  army  received 
the  unstinted  applause  of  the  military  experts  of  Europe. 
But  as  the  cable  flashed  the  incident  and  pictured  the 
scene,  the  Old  World  and  the  New  felt  alike  the  elevating 
and  inspiring  thought  that  the  heirs  of  the  largest  measure 
of  the  blessings  which  had  come  to  humanity  from  the 
triumphs  of  the  Cross,  had  taken  up  the  burden  which  God 
had  thrust  upon  them,  and  were  bearing  those  blessings 
to  the  lands  and  peoples  which  Providence  had  put  in 
their  hands. 

The  other  sentiment  of  Tennyson,  often  quoted  and  now 
derided,  is : — 

"  We  the  heirs  of  all  the  ages  in  the  foremost  files  of  time." 

The  poet  had  in  his  mind  the  thinkers  of  antiquity,  the 
literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Dante,  Milton,  Bacon,  and 
Shakespeare.  We  have  in  our  minds  all  these  and  also  the 
fruits  of  the  active  working  of  the  principles  of  freedom 
which  we  have  inherited.  Wc  have  in  our  minds  and  in  our 
politics  the  throttling  grasp  of  the  skeleton  hand  and  mailed 
fingers  of  Cortez  and  Pizarro  struck  from  the  throats  of  the 
peoples  of  this  Western  hemisphere.  We  share  the  deep 
exultation  of  Tennyson  in  all  the  glorious  works  of  ancient, 
mediaeval,  and  modern  genius;  but  we  leave  our  libraries 
and  the  companionship  of  the  ancient,  when  the  night  is 
spent,  to  take  a  step  by  day  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
with  Dewey,  Sampson  and  Schley,  with  Shafter,  Mcnitt 
and  our  own  Roosevelt.  The  problems  of  our  politics 
are  soluble  by  American  pluck,  and  the  heritage  which 
makes  us  Americans. 
25 


386  CHAUNCEY    MITCHELL   DEPEW 

They  will  be  solved  in  the  American  way.  We  will 
prove  that  we  can  both  preserve  every  principle  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  and  of  governed  Colonies.  We  will  keep 
intact  and  free  from  entanglements  the  Republic  and  its 
States  upon  the  American  continent.  We  will  educate  our 
wards  by  the  lessons  which  have  made  us  free  and  great,  to 
an  understanding  of  law,  justice  and  liberty.  We  will 
share  with  them  the  prosperity  which  is  sure  to  come  to 
them  and  to  us  in  the  expansion  of  industry  and  of  markets, 
inspired  by  order  and  freedom  ;  and  as  they  become  worthy 
of  self-government,  under  the  protection  of  the  flag  which 
has  made  them  free,  they  will  have  already  conferred  upon 
them  and  exercise  its  duties  and  its  functions.  [Great 
applause.] 


LORD   DERBY 

(EDWARD    H.  S.    STANIJvY) 


THE    DIPLOMATIST 

[Speech  of  Edward  II.  S.  vStaiiley  [Lord  Derl)y]  at  the  ninetieth  anni- 
versary banquet  of  the  Royal  Literary  Finid,  London,  May  7,  1.S79.  ],ord 
Derby  acted  as  chairman  for  the  occasion  and  delivered  the  following 
speech  in  proposing  "The  Health  of  the  Anil)assadors  and  lAIinisters  of 
Foreign  Countries,"  coupling  with  the  toast  the  name  of  General  Bulow, 
the  Danish  Minister.] 

My  Lords  and  Gentlemen:— I  have  to  propose  to 
you  the  health  of  the  Diplomatic  Body — the  Ambassadors 
and  Ministers  of  foreign  countries  who  are  resident  at  this 
Court.  [Cheers.]  During  more  than  six  years  of  my  life 
I  was  in  close  and  constant  intercourse  with  those  gentle- 
men. That  intercourse  was  always  cordial ;  it  was  often  of 
a  very  confidential  character,  and  looking  back  upon  it  I 
can  say  with  truth  that  it  was  one  of  the  most  agreeable  in- 
cidents of  an  official  existence  which  in  other  respects  in- 
volved, on  the  whole,  considerably  more  of  labor  and  anx- 
iety than  of  personal  enjoyment.      [Cheers  and  laughter.] 

In  all  my  dealings  with  the  representatives  of  foreign 
countries  I  have  invariably  experienced,  not  merely  that 
courtesy  which  is  the  immemorial  tradition  of  their  pro- 
fession, but  I  have  found  also  that  habit  of  frankness,  or 
plainness,  and  fair  dealing  with  which  diplomacy  has  not 
always  been  credited,  but  which  I  fancy  sensible  men  in  all 
countries  and  in  all  employments  \\ave  long  ago  found  out 
to  be  the  most  successful  and  the  most  satisfying  manner 
of  transacting  business.     [Cheers.] 

The  employment  of  the  diplomatist  is  peculiar  in  more 
respects  than  one.  He  pays  a  heavy  penalty  for  his  dis- 
tinction— the  penalty  of  an  almost  lifelong  exile  from  his 
own  country  ;  but  he  has  in  exchange  for  that  serious  loss 

387 


388  LORD  DERBY 

the  advanta^^e  of  an  exceptional  and  enviable  position. 
Familiar  with  the  ideas  of  all  nations,  he  is,  or  ought  to  be, 
free  from  the  prejudices  of  any.  Conversant  with  the 
secrets  of  Courts  and  Cabinets,  he  is  at  the  same  time 
brought  by  the  exigencies  of  his  profession  into  contact 
with  men  of  all  occupations  and  various  classes.  To  the 
great  events  of  the  world  which  are  passing  around  him  he 
stands  in  a  double  relation — that  of  actor  and  of  spectator. 
He  has  at  once  to  study  with  vigilance  and  accuracy — 
which  is,  indeed,  his  professional  duty — the  events  which 
are  happening  around  him,  and,  far  above  the  heat  and 
excitement  of  the  actual  conflict,  has  to  be  able  to  observe 
what  is  passing  with  a  coolness  and  impartiality  which  can 
seldom  be  attained  by  those  who  are  less  fortunately  cir- 
cumstanced. 

It  is  a  thing  commonly  said — one  hears  it  every  day — 
that  with  the  new  means  of  instantaneous  communication 
between  country  and  country  which  exists  in  these  days  the 
importance  of  the  diplomatic  profession  is  greatly  dimin- 
ished, if  not  destroyed.  That  I  believe  is  not  only  not  the 
truth  but  the  exact  reverse  of  the  truth.  It  is  one  of  those 
conversational  commonplaces  which  everybody  thinks  and 
nobody  examines.  The  telegraph  may  report  facts ;  very 
often  it  reports  fiction.  [Laughter.]  It  may  to  a  limited 
extent  convey  arguments  ;  but  that  is  the  least  part  of  the 
work  which  a  diplomatist  has  to  do.  To  judge  of  the  im- 
pulses which  influence  nations,  of  the  tendencies  which 
govern  society,  to  measure  the  peculiarities  of  individual 
character,  to  tell  his  government  what  are  the  chances  that 
this  or  that  proposition  will  meet  with  acceptance  or  with 
rejection — these  are  functions  which  cannot  be  discharged 
through  any  merely  mechanical  medium.  They  require  and 
they  involve  the  personal  contact  of  mind  with  mind  ;  they 
require  and  they  call  out  the  highest  intellectual  faculties 
of  men.     [Cheers.] 

For  that  reason  and  because,  with  the  increase  of  inter- 
national intercourse,  the  relations  of  the  great  countries  of 
the  world  are  every  day  becoming  more  numerous  and  more 
complicated,  I  believe  that  the  importance  and  the  influence 
of  the  diplomatic  profession,  so  far  from  diminishing,  tend 
rather  to  increase,     [Cheers.] 


CHARLES  DICKENS 
Photogravure  after  an  engraving 


CHARLES    DICKENS 


FRIENDS  ACROSS  TIIR  SKA 

[Speech  of  Charles  Dickens  at  the  banquet  given  him  hy  tlic  "  Vouti" 
Men  of  Boston,"  February  i,  1842,  in  response  to  the  toast:  "Health" 
Happiness  and  a  Hearty  Welcome  to  Charles  Dickens."  The  company 
consisted  of  about  two  hundred,  among  whom  were  George  Bancroft, 
Washington  AUston,  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  At  the  close  of  the 
novelist's  speech,  which  the  newspapers  of  the  day  recorded  as  having 
been  delivered  in  a  "  warm,  fluent  and  manly  tone,"  the  President  of  the 
evening,  Josiah  Ouincy,  Jr.,  rose  amid  the  cheering,  and  proposed  a  second 
toast  as  follows  :  "  It  has  been  said  that  painters  in  portraying  pictures 
of  ideal  female  beauty  imconsciously  sketched  the  features  of  her  who 
was  dearest  to  their  hearts.  If  this  were  true  of  the  novelist  as  of  the 
painter,how  greatl}'  are  the  admirers  of  the  lovely  creations  of  our  friend's 
genius  indebted  to  her  who  holds  this  relation  to  him  !  With  his  permis- 
sion, therefore,  I  propose  the  health  of  the  lady  of  our  distinguished 
guest.  If  .she  were  the  model  of  the  pure  and  elevated  women  of  his 
works,  it  might  be  well  said  that  she  was  the  better  half  even  of  Charles 
Dickens."  This  toast  was  received  with  nine  cheers,  and  was  drunk 
while  the  company  were  all  standing.] 


Gentlemen  : — If  you  had  given  this  splendid  entertain- 
ment to  any  one  else  in  the  whole  wide  world — if  I  were  to- 
night to  exult  in  the  triumph  of  my  dearest  friend — if  I 
stood  here  upon  my  defence,  to  repel  any  unjust  attack — 
to  appeal  as  a  stranger  to  your  generosity  and  kindness  as 
the  freeest  people  on  the  earth — I  could,  putting  some  re- 
straint upon  myself,  stand  among  you  as  self-possessed  and 
unmoved  as  I  should  be  alone  in  my  own  room  in  England. 
But  when  I  have  the  echoes  of  your  cordial  greeting  ring- 
ing in  my  ears  ;  when  I  see  your  kind  faces  beaming  a  wel- 
come so  warm  and  earnest  as  never  man  had — I  feel,  it  is 
my  nature,  so  vanquished  and  subdued,  that  I  have  hardly 
fortitude  enough  to  thank  you.     If  your  President,  instead 

389 


390  CHARLES    DICKENS 

of  pouring  forth  that  delightful  mixture  of  humor  and 
pathos  which  you  have  just  heard  with  so  much  delight  had 
been  but  a  caustic,  ill-natured  man — if  he  had  only  been  a 
dull  one — if  I  could  only  have  doubted  or  distrusted  him 
or  you,  I  should  have  had  my  wits  at  my  fingers'  ends,  and, 
using  them,  could  have  held  you  at  arm's  length.  But  you 
have  given  me  no  such  opportunity  ;  you  take  advantage  of 
me  in  the  tenderest  point ;  you  give  me  no  chance  of  play- 
ing at  company,  or  holding  you  at  a  distance,  but  flock 
about  me  like  a  host  of  brothers,  and  make  this  place  like 
home.  Indeed,  gentlemen,  indeed,  if  it  be  natural  and 
allowable  for  each  of  us,  on  his  own  hearth,  to  express  his 
thoughts  in  the  most  homely  fashion,  and  to  appear  in  his 
plainest  garb,  I  have  a  fair  claim  upon  you  to  let  me  do  so 
to-night,  for  you  have  made  my  house  an  Aladdin's  Palace. 
You  fold  so  tenderly  within  your  breasts  that  common  house- 
hold lamp  in  which  my  feeble  fire  is  all  enshrined,  and  at 
which  my  flickering  torch  is  lighted  up,  that  straight  my 
household  gods  take  wing,  and  are  transported  there.  And 
whereas  it  is  written  of  that  fairy  structure  that  it  never 
moved  without  two  shocks — one  when  it  rose,  and  one 
when  it  settled  down — I  can  say  of  mine  that,  however  sharp 
a  tug  it  took  to  pluck  it  from  its  native  ground,  it  struck  at 
once  an  easy,  and  a  deep  and  lasting  root  into  this  soil ;  and 
loved  it  as  its  own.  I  can  say  more  of  it,  and  say  with  truth, 
that  long  before  it  moved,  or  had  a  chance  of  moving,  its 
master — perhaps  from  some  secret  sympathy  between  its  tim- 
bers, and  a  certain  stately  tree  that  has  its  being  hereabout, 
and  spreads  its  broad  branches  far  and  wide — dreamed  by 
day  and  night,  for  years,  of  setting  foot  upon  this  shore, 
and  breathing  this  pure  air.  And,  trust  me,  gentlemen, 
that,  if  I  had  wandered  here,  unknowing  and  unknown,  I 
would — if  I  know  my  own  heart — have  come  with  all  my 
sympathies  clustering  as  richly  about  this  land  and  people — 
with  all  my  sense  of  justice  as  keenly  alive  to  their  high 
claims  on  every  man  who  loves  God's  image — with  all  my 
energies  as  fully  bent  on  judging  for  myself,  and  speaking 
out,  and  telling  in  my  sphere  the  truth,  as  I  do  now,  when 
you  rain  down  your  welcomes  on  my  head. 

Your  President  has  alluded  to  those  writings  which  have 
been  my  occupation  for  some  years  past  ;  and  you  have  re. 


FRIENDS   ACROSS   THE   SEA  39 1 

ccivcd  his  allusions  in  manner  which  assures  nie— if  I  needed 
any  such  assurance — that  wc  arc  old  friends  in  tiie  spirit, 
and  have  been  in  close  communion  for  a  lon^^  time. 

It  is  not  easy  for  a  man  to  speak  of  in's  own  books.  I 
daresay  that  few  persons  have  been  more  interested  in  mine 
than  I,  and  if  it  be  a  general  principle  in  nature  that  a  lover's 
love  is  blind,  and  that  a  mother's  love  is  blind,  I  believe  it 
may  be  said  of  an  author's  attachment  to  the  creatures  of 
his  own  imagination,  that  it  is  a  perfect  model  of  constancy 
and  devotion,  and  is  the  blindest  of  all.  But  the  objects  and 
purposes  I  have  had  in  view  are  very  plain  and  simple,  and 
may  be  easily  told.  I  have  always  had,  and  always  shall  have, 
an  earnest  and  true  desire  to  contribute,  as  far  as  in  me  lies,  to 
the  common  stock  of  healthful  cheerfulness  and  enjoyment, 
I  have  always  had,  and  always  shall  have,  an  invincible  re- 
pugnance to  that  mole-eyed  philosophy  which  loves  the  dark- 
ness, and  winks  and  scowls  in  the  light.  I  believe  that  Vir- 
tue shows  quite  as  well  in  rags  and  patches  as  she  does  in 
purple  and  fine  linen.  I  believe  that  she  and  every  beautiful 
object  in  external  nature,  claim  some  sympathy  in  the 
breast  of  the  poorest  man  who  breaks  his  scanty  loaf  of  daily 
bread.  I  believe  that  she  goes  barefoot  as  well  as  shod.  I 
believe  that  she  dwells  rather  oftener  in  alleys  and  by-ways 
than  she  does  in  courts  and  palaces,  and  that  it  is  good,  and 
pleasant,  and  profitable  to  track  her  out,  and  follow  her.  I 
believe  that  to  lay  one's  hand  upon  some  of  those  rejected 
ones  whom  the  world  has  too  long  forgotten,  and  too  often 
misused,  and  to  say  to  the  proudest  and  most  thoughtless — 
"These  creatures  have  the  same  elements  and  cai)acities  of 
goodness  as  yourselves,  they  are  moulded  in  the  same  form, 
and  made  of  the  same  clay  ;  and  though  ten  times  worse 
than  you,  may,  in  having  retained  anything  of  their  original 
nature  amidst  the  trials  and  distresses  of  their  condition,  be 
really  ten  times  better."  I  believe  that  to  do  this  is  to 
pursue  a  worthy  and  not  useless  vocation.  Gentlemen,  that 
you  think  so  too,  your  fervent  greeting  sufficiently  assures 
me.  That  this  feeling  is  alive  in  the  Old  World  as  well  as 
in  the  New,  no  man  should  know  better  than  I — I,  who 
have  found  such  wide  and  ready  sympathy  in  my  own  dear 
land.  That  in  expressing  it,  Ave  are  but  treading  in  the  steps 
of  those  great   master-spirits  who  have    gone    before,    we 


392  CHARLES    DICKENS 

know  by  reference  to  all  the  bright  examples  in  our  literature 
from  Shakespeare  downward. 

There  is  one  otlier  point  connected  with  the  labors  (if  I 
may  call  them  so)  that  you  hold  in  such  generous  esteem, 
to  which  I  cannot  help  adverting.  I  cannot  help  expressing 
the  delight,  the  more  than  happiness  it  was  to  me  to  find 
so  strong  an  interest  awakened  on  this  side  of  the  water,  in 
favor  of  that  little  heroine  of  mine,  to  whom  your  Presi- 
dent has  made  allusion,  who  died  in  her  youth.  I  had  let- 
ters about  that  child,  in  England,  from  the  dwellers  in  log- 
houses,  amongst  the  morasses,  and  swamps,  and  densest 
forests,  and  deepest  solitudes  of  the  Far  West.  Many  a 
sturdy  hand,  hard  with  the  axe  and  spade,  and  browned  by 
the  summer's  sun,  has  taken  up  the  pen,  and  written  to  me 
a  little  history  of  domestic  joy  or  sorrow,  always  coupled, 
I  am  proud  to  say,  with  something  of  interest  in  that  little 
tale,  or  some  comfort  or  happiness  derived  from  it  ;  and  my 
correspondent  has  always  addressed  me,  not  as  a  writer  of 
books  for  sale,  resident  some  four  or  five  thousand  miles 
away,  but  as  a  friend  to  whom  he  might  freely  impart  the 
joys  and  sorrows  of  his  own  fireside.  Many  a  mother — I 
could  reckon  them  now  by  dozens,  not  by  units — has  done 
the  like,  and  has  told  me  how  she  lost  such  a  child  at  such  a 
time,  and  where  she  lay  buried,  and  how  good  she  was,  and 
how,  in  this  or  that  respect,  she  resembled  Nell.  I  do  as- 
sure you  that  no  circumstance  of  my  life  has  given  me  one- 
hundredth  part  of  the  gratification  I  have  derived  from  this 
source.  I  was  wavering  at  the  time  whether  or  not  to  wind 
up  my  Clock*  and  come  and  see  this  country,  and  this  de- 
cided me.  I  felt  as  if  it  were  a  positive  duty,  as  if  I  were 
bound  to  pack  up  my  clothes,  and  come  and  see  my  friends  ; 
and  even  now  I  have  such  an  odd  sensation  in  connection 
with  these  things,  that  you  have  no  chance  of  spoiling  me. 
I  feel  as  though  we  were  agreeing — as  indeed  we  are,  if  we 
substitute  for  fictitious  characters  the  classes  from  which 
they  are  drawn — about  third  parties,  in  whom  we  had  a 
common  interest.  At  every  new  act  of  kindness  on  your 
part,   I    say    to  myself,  "  That's    for   Oliver  ;   I  should  not 

*  "Master  Humphrey's  Clock,"  under  which  title  the  two  novels — 
"  Barnaby  Rudge  "  and  "The  Old  Curiosity  Shop  " — originally  ap> 
peared. 


FRIENDS    ACROSS    TIIK    SKA  ^03 

wonder  if  that  were  meant  for  Sinikc;  I  have  no  ch)ubt  ih.it 
is  intended  for  Nell;"  and  so  I  become  a  much  happier, 
certainly,  but  a  more  sober  and  relirin-;  man  than  ever  I 
was  before. 

Gentlemen,  talking  of  my  friends  in  America  brings  me 
back,  naturally  and  of  course,  to  you.  Coming  back  to  you, 
and  being  thereby  reminded  of  the  pleasure  we  have  in  store 
in  hearing  the  gentlemen  who  sit  about  me,  I  arrive  by  the 
easiest,  though  not  by  the  shortest  course  in  the  world,  at 
the  end  of  what  I  have  to  say.  But  before  I  sit  down,  there 
is  one  topic  on  which  I  am  desirous  to  lay  particular  stress. 
It  has,  or  should  have,  a  strong  interest  for  us  all,  since  to 
its  literature  every  country  must  look  for  one  great  means 
of  refining  and  improving  its  people,  and  one  great  source 
of  national  pride  and  honor.  You  have  in  America  great 
writers — great  writers — who  will  live  in  all  time,  and  are  as 
familiar  to  our  lips  as  household  words.  Deriving  (as  they 
all  do  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  in  their  several  walks) 
their  inspiration  from  the  stupendous  country  that  gave 
them  birth,  they  diffuse  a  better  knowledge  of  it,  and  a 
higher  love  for  it,  all  over  the  civilized  world.  I  take  leave 
to  say,  in  the  presence  of  some  of  those  gentlemen,  that  I 
hope  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when  they,  in  America, 
will  receive  of  right  some  substantial  profit  and  return  in 
England  from  their  labors  :  and  when  we,  in  England,  shall 
receive  some  substantial  profit  and  return  in  America  for 
ours.  Pray  do  not  misunderstand  me.  Securing  to  myself 
from  day  to  day  the  means  of  an  honorable  subsistence, 
I  would  rather  have  the  affectionate  regard  of  my  fellow 
men,  than  I  would  have  heaps  and  mines  of  gold,  liut  the 
two  things  do  not  seem  to  me  incompatible.  They  cannot 
be,  for  nothing  good  is  incompatible  with  justice.  There 
must  be  an  international  arrangement  in  this  respect.  Eng- 
land has  done  her  part,  and  I  am  confident  that  the  time  is 
not  far  distant  when  America  will  do  hers.  It  becomes  the 
character  of  a  great  country;  firstly,  because  it  is  justice; 
secondly,  because  without  it  you  never  can  have,  and  keep, 
a  literature  of  your  own. 

Gentlemen,  I  thank  you  with  feelings  of  gratitude,  such 
as  are  not  often  awakened,  and  can  never  be  expressed. 
As  I  understand  it  to  be  the  pleasant  custom  here  to  finish 


394  CHARLES   DICKENS 

with  a  toast,  I  would  beg  to  give  you  :  "  America  and 
England,  and  may  they  never  have  any  division  but  the 
Atkmtic  between  them."     [Applause.] 


TRIBUTE  TO  WASHINGTON  IRVING 

[Speech  of  Charles  Dickens  at  the  banquet  given  in  his  honor  during 
his  first  visit  to  America,  New  York  Cit}-,  February  iS,  1S42.  Washington 
Irving  presided  at  the  banquet,  and  nearly  eight  hundred  of  the  most 
distinguished  citizens  of  New  York  were  present.  The  speech  here  given 
was  delivered  in  response  to  the  sentiment  proposed  by  the  chairman 
"  Charles  Dickens,  the  Literary  Guest  of  the  Nation."] 

Gentlemen  : — I  don't  know  how  to  thank  you — I  really 
don't  know  how.  You  would  naturally  suppose  that  my 
former  experience  would  have  given  me  this  power,  and 
that  the  difficulties  in  my  way  would  have  been  diminished  ; 
but  I  assure  you  the  fact  is  exactly  the  reverse,  and  I  have 
completely  balked  the  ancient  proverb  that  "a  rolling  stone 
gathers  no  moss;"  and  in  my  progress  to  this  city  I  have 
collected  such  a  weight  of  obligations  and  acknowledgment 
— I  have  picked  up  such  an  enormous  mass  of  fresh  moss  at 
every  point,  and  was  so  struck  by  the  brilliant  scenes  of 
Monday  night,  that  I  thought  I  could  never  by  any  pos- 
sibility grow  any  bigger.  I  have  made  continually  new  ac- 
cumulations to  such  an  extent  that  I  am  compelled  to  stand 
still,  and  can  roll  no  more  ! 

Gentlemen,  we  learn  from  the  authorities,  that,  when 
fairy  stones,  or  balls,  or  rolls  of  thread,  stopped  at  their  own 
accord — as  I  do  not — it  presaged  some  great  catastrophe 
near  at  hand.  The  precedent  holds  good  in  this  case. 
When  I  have  remembered  the  short  time  I  have  before  me 
to  spend  in  this  land  of  mighty  interests,  and  the  poor  op- 
portunity I  can  at  best  have  of  acquiring  a  knowledge  of, 
and  forming  an  acquaintance  with  it,  I  have  felt  it  almost  a 
duty  to  decline  the  honors  you  so  generously  heap  upon  me, 
and  pass  more  quietly  among  you.  For  Argus  himself, 
though  he  had  but  one  mouth  for  his  hundred  eyes,  would 
have  found  the  reception  of  a  public  entertainment  once  a 
week  too  much  for  his  greatest  activity  ;  and,  as  I  would  lose 
no  scrap  of  the  rich  instruction  and  the  delightful  knowledge 


TRIIUJTE    TO   WASmXdTOX    IRVING  395 

which  meet  mc  on  every  hand  (and  already  I  have  gleaned 
a  great  deal  from  your  hospitals  and  connnon  jails),— I  have 
resolved  to  take  up  my  staff,  and  go  my  way  rejoicing,  and 
for  the  future  to  shake  hands  with  America,  not  at  parties 
but  at  home  ;  and,  therefore,  gentlemen,  I  say  to-night,  with 
a  full  heart,  and  an  honest  purpose,  and  grateful  feelings,  that 
I  bear,  and  shall  ever  bear,  a  deep  sense  of  your  kind,  your 
affectionate  and  your  noble  greeting,  which  it  is  utterly  im- 
possible to  convey  in  words.  No  European  sky  without, 
and  no  cheerful  home  or  wx^ll-warmed  room  within,  shall 
ever  shut  out  this  land  from  my  vision.  I  shall  often  hear 
your  words  of  welcome  in  my  quiet  room,  and  oftenest 
when  most  quiet ;  and  shall  see  your  faces  in  the  blazing  fire. 
If  I  should  live  to  grow  old,  the  scenes  of  this  and  other  eve- 
nings will  shine  as  brightly  to  my  dull  eyes  fifty  years  hence 
as  now  ;  and  the  honors  you  bestow  upon  mc  shall  be  wl-11 
remembered  and  paid  back  in  my  undying  love,  and  honest 
endeavors  for  the  good  of  my  race. 

Gentlemen,  one  other  Avord  whh  reference  to  this  first 
person  singular,  and  then  I  shall  close.  I  came  here  in  an 
open,  honest,  and  confiding  spirit,  if  ever  man  did,  and  be- 
cause I  felt  a  deep  sympathy  in  your  land  ;  had  I  felt  other- 
wise, I  should  have  kept  away.  As  I  came  here,  and  am 
here,  without  the  least  admixture  of  one-hundredth  part  of 
one  grain  of  base  alloy,  without  one  feeling  of  unworthy 
reference  to  self  in  any  respect,  I  claim,  in  regard  to  the 
past,  for  the  last  time,  my  right  in  reason,  in  truth,  and  in 
justice,  to  approach,  as  I  have  done  on  two  former  occasions, 
a  question  of  literary  interest.  I  claim  that  justice  be  done  ; 
and  I  prefer  this  claim  as  one  who  has  a  right  to  speak  and 
be  heard.  I  have  only  to  add  that  I  shall  be  as  true  to  you 
as  you  have  been  to  me.  I  recognize,  in  your  enthusiastic 
approval  of  the  creatures  of  my  fancy,  your  enlightened  care 
for  the  happiness  of  the  many,  your  tender  regard  for  the 
afflicted,  your  sympathy  for  the  downcast,  your  plans  for 
correcting  and  improving  the  bad,  and  for  encouraging  the 
good;  and  to  advance  these  great  objects  shall  be,  to  the 
end  of  my  life,  my  earnest  endeavor,  to  the  extent  of  my 
humble  ability.  Having  said  thus  much  with  reference  to 
myself,  I  shall  have  the  pleasure  of  saying  a  few  words  with 
reference  to  somebody  else. 


396  CHARLES  dickp:ns 

There  is  in  this  city  a  gentleman  who,  at  the  reception  of 
one  of  my  books — I  well  remember  it  was  "The  Old  Curios- 
ity Shop  " — wrote  to  me  in  England  a  letter  so  generous,  so 
affectionate,  and  so  manly,  that  if  I  had  written  the  book 
under  every  circumstance  of  disappointment,  of  discourage- 
ment, and  difficulty,  instead  of  the  reverse,  I  should  have 
found  in  the  receipt  of  that  letter  my  best  and  most  happy 
reward.  I  answered  him,  and  he  answered  me,  and  so  we 
kept  shaking  hands  autographically,  as  if  no  ocean  rolled 
between  us.  I  came  here  to  this  city  eager  to  see  him,  and 
[laying  his  hand  upon  Irving's  shoulder]  here  he  sits !  I 
need  not  tell  you  how  happy  and  delighted  I  am  to  see  him 
here  to-night  in  this  capacity. 

Washington  Irving!  Why,  gentlemen,  I  don't  go  up- 
stairs to  bed  two  nights  out  of  the  seven — as  a  very  creditable 
witness  near  at  hand  can  testify — I  say  I  do  not  go  to  bed  two 
nights  out  of  the  seven  without  taking  Washington  Irving 
under  my  arm  ;  and,  when  I  don't  take  him  I  take  his  own 
brother,  Oliver  Goldsmith.  Washington  Irving!  Why,  of 
whom  but  him  was  I  thinking  the  other  day  when  I  came 
up  by  the  Hog's  Back,  the  Frying  Pan,  Hell  Gate,  and  all 
these  places  ?  Why,  when,  not  long  ago,  I  visited  Shake- 
speare's birthplace,  and  went  beneath  the  roof  where  he 
first  saw  light,  whose  name  but  his  was  pointed  out  to  me 
upon  the  wall  ?  Washington  Irving — Diedrich  Knicker- 
bocker— Geoffrey  Crayon — why,  where  can  you  go  that 
they  have  not  been  there  before  ?  Is  there  an  English  farm 
— is  there  an  English  stream,  an  English  city,  or  an  English 
country-seat,  where  they  have  not  been  ?  Is  there  no 
Bracebridge  Hall  in  existence  ?  Has  it  no  ancient  shades 
or  quiet  streets? 

In  bygone  times,  when  Irving  left  that  Hall,  he  left  sit- 
ting in  an  old  oak  chair,  in  a  small  parlor  of  the  Boar's 
Head,  a  little  man  with  a  red  nose,  and  an  oilskin  hat. 
When  I  came  away  he  was  sitting  there  still ! — not  a  man 
like  him,  but  the  same  man — with  the  nose  of  immortal 
redness  and  the  hat  of  an  undying  glaze  !  Crayon,  while 
there,  was  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  a  certain  radical  fel- 
low, who  used  to  go  about,  with  a  hatful  of  newspapers, 
woefully  out  at  elbows,  and  with  a  coat  of  great  an- 
tiquity.    Why,  gentlemen,  I  know  that  man — Tibbies  the 


TRIBUTE    TO    WASFIIXC, TON    IKVIN'G  397 

elder,  and  he  has  not  changed  a  liair  ;  and,  when  I  came 
away,  he  charged  me  to  give  his  best  respects  to  Washing- 
ton Irving ! 

Leaving  the  town  and  the  rustic  Ufe  of  I'lnghind— for- 
getting  this  man,  if  we  can — putting  out  of  mind  the  country 
churchyard  and  the  broken  heart — let  us  cross  the  water 
again,  and  ask  who  has  associated  himself  most  closely  with 
the  Italian  peasantry  and  the  bandits  of  the  Pyrenees? 
When  the  traveller  enters  his  little  chamber  beyond  the 
Alps — listening  to  the  dim  echoes  of  the  long  passages 
and  spacious  corridors — damp,  and  gloomy,  and  cold — as 
he  hears  the  tempest  beating  with  fury  against  his  window, 
and  gazes  at  the  curtains,  dark,  and  heavy,  and  covered  with 
mould — and  when  all  the  ghost-stories  that  ever  were  told 
come  up  before  him — amid  all  his  thick-coming  fancies, 
whom  does  he  think  of?     Washington  Irving. 

Go  farther  still :  go  to  the  Moorish  fountains,  sparkling 
full  in  the  moonlight — go  among  the  water-carriers  and  the 
village  gossips  living  still  as  in  days  of  old — and  who  has 
travelled  among  them  before  you,  and  peopled  the  Alham- 
bra  and  made  eloquent  its  shadows?  Who  awakes  there  a 
voice  from  every  hill  and  in  every  cavern,  and  bids  legends, 
which  for  centuries  have  slept  a  dreamless  sleep,  or  watched 
unwinkingly,  start  up  and  pass  before  you  in  all  their  life 
and  glory  ? 

But  leaving  this  again,  who  embarked  with  Columbus 
upon  his  gallant  ship,  traversed  with  him  the  dark  and 
mighty  ocean,  leaped  upon  the  land  and  planted  there  the 
flag  of  Spain,  but  this  same  man,  now  sitting  by  my  side? 
And  being  here  at  home  again,  who  is  a  more  fit  companion 
for  money-diggers?  And  what  pen  but  his  has  made  Rip 
Van  Winkle,  playing  at  nine-pins  on  that  thundering 
afternoon,  as  much  part  and  parcel  of  the  Catskill  Moun- 
tains as  any  tree  or  crag  that  they  can  boast  ? 

But  these  are  topics  familiar  from  my  boyhood,  and  which 
I  am  apt  to  pursue  ;  and  lest  I  should  be  tempted  now  to 
talk  too  long  about  them,  I  will,  in  conclusion,  give  you  a 
sentiment,  most  appropriate,  I  am  sure,  in  the  presence  of 
such  writers  as  Bryant,  Ilalleck,  and — but  I  suppose  I 
must  not  mention  the  ladies  here — "  The  Literature  of 
America."     She  well  knows  how  to  do  honor  to  her  own 


398  CHARLES    DICKENS 

literature  and  to  that  of  other  lands,  when  she  chooses 
Washington  Irving  for  her  representative  in  the  country  of 
Cervantes.      [Applause.] 


MACREADY  AND    BULWER-LYTTON 

[Speech  of  Charles  Dickens  at  a  banquet  given  to  William  Charles 
Macready,  London,  March  i,  1851.  Upwards  of  six  hundred  gentle- 
men assembled  to  do  honor  to  the  great  actor  on  his  retirement  from  the 
stage.  Sir  Edward  Bnlwer-Lji-ton  took  the  chair.  The  following  speech 
was  delivered  b}'  Charles  Dickens  in  proposing  "  The  Health  of  the 
Chairman."] 

Gentlemen  : — After  all  you  have  already  heard,  and  so 
rapturously  received,  I  assure  you  that  not  ev^en  the  warmth 
of  your  kind  welcome  would  embolden  me  to  hope  to 
interest  you  if  I  had  not  full  confidence  in  the  subject  I  have 
to  offer  to  your  notice.  But  my  reliance  on  the  strength  of 
this  appeal  to  you  is  so  strong  that  I  am  rather  encouraged 
than  daunted  by  the  brightness  of  the  track  on  which  I  have 
to  throw  my  little  shadow. 

Gentlemen,  as  it  seems  to  me,  there  are  three  great  requi- 
sites essential  to  the  perfect  realization  of  a  scene  so  unusual 
and  so  splendid  as  that  in  which  we  are  now  assembled.  The 
first,  and  I  must  say  very  difficult  requisite,  is  a  man  pos- 
sessing the  stronghold  in  the  general  remembrance,  the 
indisputable  claim  on  the  general  regard  and  esteem,  which 
is  possessed  by  my  dear  and  much-valued  friend,  our  guest. 
The  second  requisite  is  the  presence  of  a  body  of  entertain- 
ers,— a  great  multitude  of  hosts  so  cheerful  and  good- 
humored  (under,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  some  personal  incon- 
venience),— so  warmhearted  and  so  nobly  in  earnest,  as 
those  whom  I  have  the  privilege  of  addressing.  The  third, 
and  certainly  not  the  least  of  these  requisites,  is  a  president 
who,  less  by  his  social  position,  which  he  may  claim  by 
inheritance,  or  by  fortune,  which  may  have  been  adventi- 
tiously won,  and  may  be  again  accidentally  lost,  than  by  his 
comprehensive  genius,  shall  fitly  represent  the  best  part  of 
him  to  whom  honor  is  due,  and  the  best  part  of  those  who 
unite  in  the  doing  of  it.  Such  a  president  I  think  we  have 
found  in  our  chairman  of  to-night,  and  I  need  scarcely  add 


MACREADY    AND    i;iMAVKk-LVT  ION  y)t) 

that  our  chairnian's  health  is  the  toasl  I  luivc  to  piuijusc  to 
you. 

Many  of  those  who  now  hear  nic  were  present,  I  daresay, 
at  that  memorable  scene  on  Wednesday  ni^dit  hist,*  when 
the  great  vision  which  had  been  a  delight  and  a  lesson,— 
very  often,  I  daresay,  a  support  and  a  comfort  to  you,  which 
had  for  many  years  improved  and  charmed  us,  and  to  which 
we  had  looked  for  an  elevated  relief  from  the  labors  of  our 
lives,  faded  from  our  sight  for  ever.  I  will  not  stop  to 
inquire  whether  our  guest  may  or  may  not  have  looked 
backward,  through  rather  too  long  a  period  for  us,  to  some 
remote  and  distant  time  when  he  might  possibly  bear  some 
far-off  likeness  to  a  certain  Spanish  archbishop  whom  Gil 
Bias  once  served.  Nor  will  I  stop  to  inquire  whether  it  was 
a  reasonable  disposition  in  the  audience  of  Wednesday  to 
seize  upon  the  words  : — 

"And  I  have  bought 
Golden  opinions  from  all  sorts  of  people, 
Which  would  be  worn  now  in  their  newest  gloss, 
Not  cast  aside  so  soon "  f 

but  I  will  venture  to  intimate  to  those  whom  I  am  now 
addressing  how  in  my  mind  I  mainly  connect  that  occasion 
with  the  present.  When  I  looked  round  on  the  vast 
assemblage,  and  observed  the  huge  pit  hushed  into  stillness 
on  the  rising  of  the  curtain,  and  that  mighty  surging  gallery, 
where  men  in  their  shirt-sleeves  had  been  striking  out  their 
arms  like  strong  swimmers — when  I  saw  that  boisterous 
human  flood  become  still  water  in  a  moment,  and  remain  so 
from  the  opening  to  the  end  of  the  play,  it  suggested  to  me 
something  besides  the  trustworthiness  of  an  English  crowd, 
and  the  delusion  under  which  those  labor  who  are  apt  to 
disparage  and  malign  it;  it  suggested  to  me  that  in  meeting 
here  to-night  we  undertook  to  represent  something  of  the 
all-pervading  feeling  of  that  crowd,  through  all  its  inter- 
mediate degrees,  from  the  full-dressed  lady,  with  her 
diamonds  sparkling  upon  her  breast  in  the  proscenium  box, 
to  the  half-undressed  gentleman,  who  bides  his  time  to  take 

*  February  26,  1851,  Mr.  Macready's   farewell    benefit   at  Drury    I.ane 
Theatre,  on  which  occasion  he  played  the  part  of  ISIacbelh.— Ed. 
f  Macbeth,  Act  I.,  Sc  7. 


400  CHARLES   DICKENS 

some  refreshment  in  the  back  row  of  the  gallery.  And  I 
consider,  gentlemen,  that  no  one  who  could  possibly  be 
placed  in  this  chair  could  so  well  head  that  comprehensive 
representation,  and  could  so  well  give  the  crowning  grace 
to  our  festivities,  as  one  whose  comprehensive  genius  has  in 
his  various  works  embraced  them  all,  and  who  has,  in  his 
dramatic  genius,  enchanted  and  enthralled  them  all  at  once. 

Gentlemen,  it  is  not  for  me  here  to  recall,  after  what  you 
have  heard  this  night,  what  I  have  seen  and  known  in  the 
bygone  times  of  Mr.  Macready's  management,  of  the 
strong  friendship  of  Sir  Bulwer  Lytton  for  him,  of  the 
association  of  his  pen  with  his  earliest  successes,  or  of  Mr. 
Macready's  zealous  and  untiring  services ;  but  it  may  be 
permitted  me  to  say  what,  in  any  public  mention  of  him,  I 
can  never  repress,  that  in  the  path  we  both  tread  I  have 
uniformly  found  him  from  the  first  the  most  generous  of 
men  ;  quick  to  encourage,  slow  to  disparage,  ever  anxious  to 
assert  the  order  of  which  he  is  so  great  an  ornament ;  never 
condescending  to  shuffle  it  off,  and  leave  it  outside  state 
rooms,  as  a  Mussulman  might  leave  his  slippers  outside 
a  mosque. 

There  is  a  popular  prejudice,  a  kind  of  superstition  to  the 
effect  that  authors  are  not  a  particularly  united  body,  that 
they  are  not  invariably  and  inseparably  attached  to  each 
other.  I  am  afraid  I  must  concede  half  a  grain  or  so  of  truth 
to  that  superstition  ;  but  this  I  know,  that  there  can  hardly  be 
— that  there  hardly  can  have  been — among  the  followers  of 
literature,  a  man  of  more  high  standing  farther  above  these 
little  grudging  jealousies,  which  do  sometimes  disparage 
its  brightness,  than  Sir  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton. 

And  I  have  the  strongest  reason  just  at  present  to  bear 
my  testimony  to  his  great  consideration  for  those  evils 
which  are  sometimes  unfortunately  attendant  upon  it, 
though  not  on  him.  For,  in  conjunction  with  some  other 
gentlemen  now  present,  I  have  just  embarked  in  a  design 
with  Sir  Bulwer  Lytton,  to  smooth  the  rugged  way  of 
young  laborers,  both  in  literature  and  the  fine  arts,  and  to 
soften,  but  by  no  eleemosynary  means,  the  declining  years 
of  meritorious  age.  And  if  that  project  prosper  as  I  hope 
it  will,  and  as  I  know  it  ought,  it  will  one  day  be  an  honor 
to  England  where  there  is  now  a  reproach  ;  originating  in 


THE   ACTOH's   art  40I 

his  sympathies,  bcin<,'  brought  into  operation  by  his  ac- 
tivity, and  endowed  from  its  very  cradle  by  his  generosity. 
There  are  many  among  you  who  will  have  each  his  own 
favorite  reason  for  drinking  our  chairman's  health,  resting 
his  claim  probably  upon  some  of  his  diversified  successes. 
According  to  the  nature  of  your  reading,  some  of  you  will 
connect  him  with  prose,  others  will  connect  him  with 
poetry.  One  will  connect  him  with  comedy,  and  another 
with  the  romantic  passions  of  the  stage,  and  his  assertion  of 
worthy  ambition  and  earnest  struggle  against  "  those  twin 
gaolers  of  the  human  heart,  low  birth  and  iron  fortune." 

Again,  another's  taste  will  lead  him  to  the  contemplation 
of  Rienzi  and  the  streets  of  Rome;  another's  to  the  rebuilt 
and  repeopled  streets  of  Pompeii ;  another's  to  the  touch- 
ing history  of  the  fireside  where  the  Caxton  family  learned 
how  to  discipline  their  natures  and  tame  their  wild  hopes 
down.  But,  however  various  their  feelings  and  reasons  may 
be,  I  am  sure  that  with  one  accord  each  will  help  the  other, 
and  all  will  swell  the  greeting  with  which  I  shall  now  pro- 
pose to  you  "The  Health  of  our  Chairman,  Sir  Edward 
Bulwer-Lytton,"     [Applause.] 


THE  ACTOR'S  ART 

[Speech  of  Charles  Dickens  at  the  sixth  annual  dinner  of  the  Royal 
General  Theatrical  Fund,  London,  April  14,  1S51.  Charles  Dickens  oc- 
cupied the  chair,  and  delivered  this  speech  in  proposin<;  the  toast  of  the 
evening,  "Success  to  the  Royal  General  Theatrical  I'und."] 

Gentlemen  : — I  have  so  often  had  the  satisfaction  of  bear- 
ing my  testimony,  in  this  place,  to  the  usefulness  of  the  excel- 
lent Institution  in  whose  behalf  we  are  assembled,  that  I 
should  be  really  sensible  of  the  disadvantage  of  having  now 
nothing  to  say  in  proposing  the  toast  you  all  anticipate,  if 
I  were  not  well  assured  that  there  is  really  nutliing  which 
needs  be  said.  I  have  to  appeal  to  you  on  the  old  grounds, 
and  no  ingenuity  of  mine  could  render  those  grounds  of 
greater  weight  than  they  have  hitherto  successfully  proved 
to  you. 

Althoudi  the  General  Theatrical  Fund  Association,  un- 
like  many  other  public  societies  and  endowmeiUs,  is  repre- 
26 


402  CHARLES    DICKENS 

sentcd  by  no  building,  whether  of  stone,  or  brick,  or  glass, 
like  that  astonishing  evidence  of  the  skill  and  energy  of  my 
friend,  Mr.  Paxton,  which  all  the  world  is  now  called  upon 
to  admire,  and  the  great  merit  of  which,  as  you  learn  from 
the  best  authorities,  is,  that  it  ought  to  have  fallen  down 
long  before  it  was  built,  and  yet  that  it  would  by  no  means 
consent  to  doing  so — although,  I  say,  this  Association  pos- 
sesses no  architectural  home,  it  is,  nevertheless,  as  plain  a 
fact,  rests  on  as  solid  a  foundation,  and  carries  as  erect  a 
front,  as  any  building  in  the  world.  And  the  best  and  the 
utmost  that  its  exponent  and  its  advocate  can  do,  standing 
here,  is  to  point  it  out  to  those  who  gather  round  it,  and  to 
say,  "  Judge  for  yourselves." 

It  may  not,  however,  be  improper  for  me  to  suggest  to  that 
portion  of  the  company  whose  previous  acquaintance  with 
it  may  have  been  limited,  what  it  is  not.  It  is  not  a  the- 
atrical association  whose  benefits  are  confined  to  a  small  and 
exclusive  body  of  actors.  It  is  a  society  whose  claims  are 
always  preferred  in  the  name  of  the  whole  histrionic  art. 
It  is  not  a  theatrical  association  adopted  to  a  state  of  the- 
atrical things  entirely  past  and  gone,  and  no  more  suited 
to  present  theatrical  requirements  than  a  string  of  pack- 
horses  would  be  suited  to  the  conveyance  of  traffic  between 
London  and  Birmingham.  It  is  not  a  rich  old  gentleman, 
with  the  gout  in  his  vitals,  brushed  and  got  up  once  a  year 
to  look  as  vigorous  as  possible,  and  brought  out  for  a 
public  airing  by  the  few  survivors  of  a  large  family  of  neph- 
ews and  nieces,  who,  afterwards,  double-lock  the  street- 
door  upon  the  poor  relations.  It  is  not  a  theatrical  asso- 
ciation which  insists  that  no  actor  can  share  its  bounty  who 
has  not  walked  so  many  years  on  those  boards  where  the  Eng- 
lish tongue  is  never  heard — between  the  little  bars  of  music 
in  an  aviary  of  singing  birds,  to  which  the  unwieldy  Swan 
of  Avon  is  never  admitted — that  bounty  which  was  gath- 
ered in  the  name  and  for  the  ele\ation  of  an  all-embracing 
art. 

No,  if  there  be  such  things,  this  thing  is  not  of  that  k'ind. 
This  is  a  theatrical  association,  expressly  adapted  to  the 
wants  and  to  the  means  of  the  whole  theatrical  profession 
all  over  England.  It  is  a  society  in  which  the  word  exclu- 
siveness  is  wholly  unknown.     It  is  a  society  which  includes 


TUK   actor's   art  403 

every  actor,  whether  he  be  Hcncdict  or  Ilamlct.  or  the 
Ghost,  or  the  Bandit,  or  the  court-physician,  or,  in  the  (jnc 
person,  the  whole  King's  arni)-.  lie  may  do  the  "  n<,'ht 
business,"  or  the  "  heavy,"  or  the  comic,  or  the  eccentric. 
He  may  be  the  captain  who  courts  the  young  lady,  whose 
uncle  still  unaccountably  persists  in  dressing  himself  in  a 
costume  one  hundred  years  older  than  his  time.  Or  he  may 
be  the  young  lady's  brother  in  the  white  gloves  and  inex- 
pressibles, whose  duty  in  the  family  appears  to  be  to  listen 
to  the  female  members  of  it  whenever  they  sing,  and  to 
shake  hands  with  everybody  between  all  the  verses.  Or  he 
may  be  the  baron  who  gives  the  fete,  and  who  sits  uneasily 
on  the  sofa  under  a  canopy  with  the  baroness  while  the  fete 
is  going  on.  Or  he  may  be  the  peasant  at  the  fete  who 
comes  on  the  stage  to  swell  the  drinking  chorus,  and  who, 
it  may  be  observed,  always  turns  his  glass  upside  down 
before  he  begins  to  drink  out  of  it.  Or  he  may  be  the  clown 
who  takes  away  the  doorstep  of  the  house  where  the  eve- 
ning party  is  going  on.  Or  he  may  be  the  gentleman  who 
issues  out  of  the  house  on  the  false  alarm,  and  is  pre- 
cipitated into  the  area.  Or,  to  come  to  the  actresses,  she 
may  be  the  fairy  who  resides  forever  in  a  revolving  star 
with  an  occasional  visit  to  a  bovver  or  a  palace.  Or  the 
actor  may  be  the  armed  head  of  the  witch's  cauldron  ;  or 
even  that  extraordinary  witch,  concerning  whom  I  have 
observed  in  country  places,  that  he  is  much  less  like  the 
notion  formed  from  the  description  of  Hopkins  than  the 
Malcolm  or  Donalbain  of  the  previous  scenes.  This  society, 
in  short,  says :  "  Be  you  what  you  may,  be  you  actor  or  ac- 
tress, be  your  path  in  your  profession  never  so  high,  or  never 
so  low,  never  so  haughty,  or  never  so  humble,  wc  offer  you 
the  means  of  doing  good  to  yourselves,  and  of  doing 
good  to  your  brethren." 

This  society  is  essentially  a  provident  institution,  appeal- 
ing to  a  class  of  men  to  take  care  of  their  own  interests, 
and  giving  a  continuous  security  only  in  return  for  a  con- 
tinuous sacrifice  and  effort.  The  actor  by  the  means  of  this 
society  obtains  his  own  right,  to  no  man's  wrong;  and  when, 
in  old  age,  or  in  disastrous  times,  he  makes  his  claim  on  the 
institution,  he  is  enabled  to  say,  *'  I  am  neither  a  beggar,  nor 
a  suppliant.     I  am    but  reaping  what  I  sowed  long  ago.  " 


404  CHARLES   DICKENS 

And  therefore  it  is  that  I  cannot  hold  out  to  you  that  in 
assisting  this  fund  you  are  doing  an  act  of  charity  in  the 
common  acceptation  of  that  phrase.  Of  all  the  abuses  of 
that  much  abused  term,  none  have  more  raised  my  indigna' 
tion  than  what  I  have  heard  in  this  room  in  past  times,  in 
reference  to  this  institution.  I  say,  if  you  help  this  institu- 
tion you  will  be  helping  the  wagoner  who  has  resolutely  put 
his  own  shoulder  to  the  wheel,  and  who  has  not  stuck  idle 
in  the  mud.  In  giving  this  aid  you  will  be  doing  an  act  of 
justice,  and  you  will  be  performing  an  act  of  gratitude  ; 
and  this  is  what  I  solicit  from  you  ;  but  I  will  not  so  far 
wrong  those  who  are  struggling  manfully  for  their  own  in- 
dependence as  to  pretend  to  entreat  from  you  an  act  of 
charity. 

I  have  used  the  word  gratitude ;  and  let  any  man  ask  his 
own  heart,  and  confess  if  he  have  not  some  grateful  acknowl- 
edgments for  the  actor's  art  ?  Not  peculiarly  because  it  is 
a  profession  often  pursued,  and  as  it  were  marked,  by 
poverty  and  misfortune — for  other  callings,  God  knows, 
have  their  distresses — nor  because  the  actor  has  sometimes 
to  come  from  scenes  of  sickness,  of  suffering,  aye,  even  of 
death  itself,  to  play  his  part  before  us — for  all  of  us.  in  our 
spheres,  have  as  often  to  do  violence  to  our  feelings  and  to 
hide  our  hearts  in  fighting  this  great  battle  of  life,  and  in 
discharging  our  duties  and  responsibilities.  But  the  art  of 
the  actor  excites  reflections,  sombre  or  grotesque,  awful  or 
humorous,  which  we  are  all  familiar  with.  If  any  man  were 
to  tell  me  that  he  denied  his  acknowledgments  to  the  stage, 
I  would  simply  put  to  him  one  question — whether  he  re- 
membered his  first  play  ? 

If  you,  gentlemen,  will  but  carry  back  your  recollection 
of  that  great  night,  and  call  to  mind  the  bright  and  harm- 
less world  which  then  opened  to  your  view,  we  shall,  I  think, 
hear  favorably  of  the  effect  upon  your  liberality  on  this  oc- 
casion from  our  Secretary. 

This  is  the  sixth  year  of  meetings  of  this  kind — the  sixth 
time  we  have  had  this  fine  child  down  after  dinner.  His 
nurse,  a  very  worthy  person  of  the  name  of  Buckstone,  who 
has  an  excellent  character  from  several  places,  will  presently 
report  to  you  that  his  chest  is  perfectly  sound,  and  that  his 
general  health  is  in  the  most  thriving  condition.     Long  may 


ENGLISH    FRIENDLINESS    FOR    AMEKKA  405 

it  be  so  ;  long  may  it  thrive  and  grow  ;  long  may  wc  meet  (it 
is  my  sincere  wish)  to  exchange  our  congratulations  on  its 
prosperity  ;  and  longer  than  the  line  of  Ranquo  may  be  that 
line  of  figures  which,  as  its  patrotic  share  in  the  national 
debt,  a  century  hence  shall  be  stated  by  the  Governor  and 
Company  of  the  Bank  of  England.     [Applause.] 


ENGLISH   FRIENDLINESS  FOR  AMERICA 

[Speech  of  Charles  Dickens  at  a  farewell  dinner,  previous  to  his  return 
to  England,  New  York  City,  April  iS,  1S6S.  Two  hundred  gentlemen 
attended  the  dinner.  Horace  Greeley  presided.  In  acknowledgment 
of  the  toast  of  his  health,  proposed  by  the  chairmam,  ISIr.  Dickens  spoke 
on  the  subject  of  international  friendliness.] 

Gentlemen  : — I  cannot  do  better  than  take  my  cue  from 
your  distinguished  President,  and  refer  in  my  first  remarks 
to  his  remarks  in  connection  with  the  old,  natural,  associ- 
ation between  you  and  me.  When  I  received  an  invitation 
from  a  private  association  of  working  members  of  the  press 
of  New  York  to  dine  with  them  to-day,  I  accepted  that 
compliment  in  grateful  remembrance  of  a  calling  that  was 
once  my  own,  and  in  loyal  sympathy  towards  a  brotherhood 
which,  in  the  spirit,  I  have  never  quitted.  To  the  wholesome 
training  of  severe  newspaper  work,  when  I  was  a  very  young 
man,  I  constantly  refer  my  first  successes;  and  my  sons  will 
hereafter  testify  of  their  father  that  he  was  always  steadily 
proud  of  that  ladder  by  wdiich  he  rose.  If  it  were  other- 
wise, I  should  have  but  a  very  poor  opinion  of  their  father, 
which,  perhaps,  upon  the  whole,  I  have  not.  Hence, 
gentlemen,  under  any  circumstances,  this  company  would 
have  been  exceptionally  interesting  and  gratifying  to  me. 
But  whereas  I  supposed  that  like  the  fairies'  pavilion  in  the 
"Arabian  Nights,"  it  would  be  but  a  mere  handful,  and  I 
find  it  turn  out,  like  the  same  elastic  pavilion,  capable  of 
comprehending  a  multitude,  so  much  the  more  proud  am  I  of 
the  honor  of  being  your  guest ;  for  you  will  readily  believe 
that  the  more  widely  representative  of  the  press  in  America 
my  entertainers  are,  the  more  I  must  feel  the  good-will  and 
the  kindly  sentiments  towards  me  of  that   vast  institution. 

Gentlemen,  so  much  of  my  voice  has  lately  been  heard  in 


406  CHARLES   DICKENS 

the  land,  and  I  have  for  upwards  of  four  hard  winter  months 
so  contended  against  what  I  have  been  sometimes  quite  ad- 
miringly assured  was  "  a  true  American  catarrh  " — a  pos- 
session which  I  have  throughout  highly  appreciated,  though 
I  might  have  preferred  to  be  naturalized  by  any  other  out- 
ward and  visible  signs — I  say,  gentlemen,  so  much  of  my 
voice  has  lately  been  heard,  that  I  might  have  been  con^ 
tented  with  troubling  3^ou  no  further,  from  my  present  stand- 
ing-point, were  it  not  a  duty  with  which  I  henceforth  charge 
myself,  not  only  here  but  on  every  suitable  occasion  what- 
soever and  wheresoever,  to  express  my  high  and  grateful 
sense  of  my  second  reception  in  America,  and  to  bear  my 
honest  testimony  to  the  national  generosity  and  magnani- 
mity. Also,  to  declare  how  astounded  I  have  been  by  the 
amazing  changes  that  I  have  seen  around  me  on  every  side 
— changes  moral,  changes  physical,  changes  in  the  amount 
of  land  subdued  and  peopled,  changes  in  the  rise  of  vast 
new  cities,  changes  in  the  growth  of  older  cities  almost  out 
of  recognition,  changes  in  the  graces  and  amenities  of  life, 
changes  in  the  press,  without  whose  advancement  no  advance- 
ment can  be  made  anywhere.  Nor  am  I,  believe  me,  so 
arrogant  as  to  suppose  that  in  five-and-twenty  years  there 
have  been  no  changes  in  me,  and  that  I  had  nothing  to  learn 
and  no  extreme  impressions  to  correct  when  I  was  here  first. 
And,  gentlemen,  this  brings  me  to  a  point  on  which  I 
have,  ever  since  T  landed  here  last  November,  observed  a 
strict  silence,  though  tempted  sometimes  to  break  it,  but  in 
reference  to  which  I  will,  with  your  good  leave,  take  you 
into  my  confidence  now.  Even  the  press,  being  human, 
may  be  sometimes  mistaken  or  misinformed,  and  I  rather 
think  that  I  have  in  one  or  two  rare  instances  known  its  in- 
formation to  be  not  perfectly  accurate  with  reference  to  my- 
self. Indeed,  I  have  now  and  again  been  more  surprised  by 
printed  news  that  I  have  read  of  myself  than  by  any  printed 
news  that  I  have  ever  read  in  my  present  state  of  existence. 
Thus,  the  vigor  and  perseverance  with  which  I  have  for 
some  months  past  been  collecting  materialsfor  and  hammer- 
ing away  at  a  new  book  on  America  have  much  astonished 
me,  seeing  that  all  that  time  it  has  been  perfectly  well- 
known  to  my  publishers  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  that 
I  positively  declared  that  no  consideration  on  earth  should 


ENGLISH    FRIENDLIXKSS    FOR    AMIiRiCA  407 

induce  mc  to  write  one.  lint  what  I  have  intended,  what  I 
have  resolved  upon  (and  this  is  the  confidence  I  sock  to 
place  in  you)  is,  on  my  return  to  Kn-^land,  in  my  own 
person,  to  bear,  for  the  behoof  of  my  countrymen,  such 
testimony  to  the  gigantic  changes  in  this  country  as  I  have 
hinted  at  to-night.  Also,  to  record  that  wherever  I  have 
been,  in  the  smallest  places  equally  with  the  largest,  I  have 
been  received  with  unsurpassable  politeness,  delicacy,  sweet 
temper,  hospitality,  consideration,  and  with  unsurpassable 
respect  for  the  privacy  daily  enforced  upon  me  by  the 
nature  of  my  avocation  here,  and  the  state  of  my  health. 
This  testimony,  so  long  as  I  live,  and*o  long  as  my  descend- 
ants have  any  legal  right  in  my  books,  I  shall  cause  to  be 
re-published,  as  an  appendix  to  every  copy  of  those  two 
books  of  mine  in  which  I  have  referred  to  America.  And 
this  I  will  do  and  cause  to  be  done,  not  in  mere  love  and 
thankfulness,  but  because  I  regard  it  as  an  act  of  plain  jus- 
tice  and  honor. 

Gentlemen,  the  transition  from  my  own  feelings  towards 
and  interest  in  America  to  those  of  the  mass  of  my  country- 
men seems  to  be  a  natural  one  ;  but,  whether  or  no,  I  make 
it  with  an  express  object.  I  was  asked  in  this  very  city, 
about  last  Christmas  time,  whether  an  American  was  not  at 
some  disadvantage  in  England  as  a  foreigner.  The  notion 
of  an  American  being  regarded  in  England  as  a  foreigner  at 
all,  of  his  ever  being  thought  of  or  spoken  of  in  that  char- 
acter, was  so  uncommonly  incongruous  and  absurd  to  me, 
that  my  gravity  was,  for  the  moment,  quite  overpowered. 
As  soon  as  it  was  restored,  I  said  that  for  years  and  years 
past  I  hoped  I  had  had  as  many  American  friends  and  had 
received  as  many  American  visitors  as  almost  any  English- 
man living,  and  that  my  unvarying  experience,  fortified  by 
theirs,  was  that  it  was  enough  in  England  to  be  an  Ameri- 
can to  be  received  with  the  readiest  respect  and  recognition 
anywhere.  Hereupon,  out  of  half-a-dozen  people,  suddenly 
spoke  out  two,  one  an  American  gentleman,  with  a  culti- 
vated taste  for  art,  who,  finding  himself  on  a  certain  Sunday 
outside  the  walls  of  a  certain  historical  English  castle, 
famous  for  its  pictures,  was  refused  admission  there,  accord- 
ing to  the  strict  rules  of  the  establishment  on  that  day,  but 
who,  on  merely  representing  that  he  was  an  American  gen- 


408  CHARLES    DICKENS 

tleman,  on  his  travels,  had,  not  to  say  the  picture  gallery, 
but  the  whole  castle,  placed  at  his  immediate  disposal.  The 
other  was  a  lady,  who,  being  in  London,  and  having  a  great 
desire  to  see  the  famous  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum, 
was  assured  by  the  English  tamily  with  whom  she  stayed 
that  it  was  unfortunately  impossible,  because  the  place  was 
closed  for  a  week,  and  she  had  only  three  days  there.  Upon 
that  lady's  going  to  the  Museum,  as  she  assured  me,  alone 
to  the  gate,  self-introduced  as  an  American  lady,  the  gate 
flew  open,  as  it  were,  magically.  I  am  unwillingly  bound 
to  add  that  she  certainly  was  young  and  exceedingly  pretty. 
Still,  the  porter  of  that  institution  is  of  an  obese  habit,  and, 
according  to  the  best  of  my  observation  of  him,  not  very 
impressible. 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  refer  to  these  trifles  as  a  collateral  as- 
surance to  you  that  the  Englishmen  who  shall  humbly  strive, 
as  I  hope  to  do,  to  be  in  England  as  faithful  to  America  as 
to  England  herself,  has  no  previous  conceptions  to  contend 
against.  Points  of  difference  there  have  been,  points  of 
difference  there  are,  points  of  difference  there  probably 
always  will  be  between  the  two  great  peoples.  But  broad- 
cast in  England  is  sown  the  sentiment  that  those  two  peoples 
are  essentially  one,  and  that  it  rests  with  them  jointly  to 
uphold  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  race,  to  which  our  president 
has  referred,  and  all  its  great  achievements  before  the  world. 
And  if  I  know  anything  of  my  countrymen — and  they  give 
me  credit  for  knowing  something — if  I  know  anything  of  my 
countrymen,  gentlemen,  the  English  heart  is  stirred  by  the 
fluttering  of  those  Stars  and  Stripes,  as  it  is  stirred  by  no 
other  flag  that  flies  except  its  own.  If  I  know  my  country- 
men, in  any  and  every  relation  towards  America,  they  begin, 
not  as  Sir  Anthony  Absolute  recommended  that  lovers  should 
begin,  with  "  a  little  aversion,"  but  with  a  great  liking  and  a 
profound  respect :  and  whatever  the  little  sensitiveness  of 
the  moment,  or  the  little  official  passion,  or  the  little  ofUcial 
policy  now,  or  then,  or  here,  or  there,  may  be,  take  my  word 
for  it,  that  the  first  enduring,  great,  popular  consideration 
in  England  is  a  generous  construction  of  justice. 

Finally,  gentlemen,  and  I  say  this  subject  to  your  correc- 
tion, I  do  believe  that  from  the  great  majority  of  honest 
minds  on  both  sides,  there  cannot  be   absent  the  conviction 


ENGLISH    FRIENDLINKSS    FOR    A.MKKICA  409 

that  it  would  be  better  for  this  globe  to  be  riven  by  an 
earthquake,  fired  by  a  comet,  overrun  by  an  iceberg,  and 
abandoned  to  the  Arctic  fox  and  bear,  than  that  it  should 
present  the  spectacle  of  these  two  great  nations,  each  of 
which  has,  in  its  own  way  and  hour,  striven  so  hard  and  so 
successfully  for  freedom,  ever  again  being  arrayed  the  one 
against  the  other.  Gentlemen,  I  cannot  thank  your  Presi- 
dent enough  or  you  enough  for  your  kind  reception  of  my 
health,  and  of  my  poor  remarks,  but,  believe  me,  I  do  thank 
you  with  the  utmost  fervor  of  which  my  soul  is  capable. 
[Applause.] 


JOHN  ADAMS  DIX 


THE  FLAG— THE  OLD  FLAG 

[Speech  of  Major-Gen.  John  A.  Dix  at  the  fiftj'-eighth  annual  dinner  of 
the  New  England  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  December  22,  1863. 
The  President,  Henry  A.  Hurlbut,  occupied  the  chair.  The  fifth  toast  was  : 
"  The  Flag — The  Old  Flag — At  last  it  waves  again  upon  the  soil  of  every 
State.  It  flaunts  defiance  in  the  face  of  treason,  and  soon  shall  float  in  tri- 
umph and  in  honor  over  the  unhallowed  grave."  In  introducing  Major- 
General  Dix  the  President  said  :  "  The  gentleman  who  will  respond  to 
this  toast  is  one  whom  we  all  know,  love  and  esteem.  When  he  held  the 
position  of  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  you  all  recollect  that  he  issued 
that  memorable  order  :  '  If  any  man  attempts  to  haul  down  that  flag, 
shoot  him  on  the  spot.'  "  Three  cheers  were  given  for  General  Dix.  All 
present  rose,  and  made  the  banquet  hall  ring  with  their  cheers  and 
plaudits.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen: — The  enthusiastic  re- 
sponse which  the  sentiment  just  read  has  received,  is  but  the 
emanation  of  a  principle  in  our  nature  as  old  as  human 
society.  In  every  age  through  which  mankind  has  passed, 
organized  communities  have  had  appropriate  emblems  for 
the  assertion  of  their  authority  at  home,  and  their  rights 
abroad.  From  the  eagles,  under  which  the  Roman  empire 
was  extended  over  the  known  portions  of  the  globe,  the 
crescents  of  the  Saracenic  race,  and  the  banners  and  ori- 
flammes  of  the  Middle  Ages,  down  to  the  national  flags  and 
standards  of  our  own  times,  a  peculiar  veneration  has  con- 
secrated these  symbols  of  sovereignty.  Victories,  social 
progress,  the  march  of  the  nations  to  prosperity  and  power, 
have  become  identified  with  them.  Insult  to  them  from 
abroad  has  been  resented  by  war.  Treachery  to  them  at 
home  has  been  visited  with  the  penalties  of  treason.  They 
have  been  hallowed  by  lofty  and  ennobling  associations ; 
but  none  of  them  by  higher  or  more  endearing  recollections 

410 


TIllC    FLAG— Till-:    OLD    FLAG  411 

than  the  flag  which  liangs  over  us  to-day  [cheers] —the  same- 
flag  under  which  our  fathers  battled  for  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence. [Applause.]  It  was  adopted  by  the  old  Con- 
gress while  the  new-born  Republic  was  struggling  into  life. 
Our  armies  first  went  forth  to  combat  under  it  when  Wash- 
ington was  their  commander-in-chief.  [Cheering.]  In  the 
hour  of  victory  we  have  given  it  to  the  winds,  as  the 
expression  of  our  thankfulness  and  joy.  In  the  days  of  our 
calamity  we  have  turned  to  it  for  support,  as  the  people  of 
God  turned  in  the  darkness  of  the  night  to  the  Pillar  of  Fire, 
which  was  conducting  them  through  the  perils  of  the  wil- 
derness. [Loud  cheering.]  Holy  associations  like  these 
should  have  made  it  sacred.  But  it  has  been  more  than 
once  torn  down,  and  trampled  under  foot  by  traitors. 
When  men  have  made  up  their  minds  to  treason,  the  highest 
of  all  crimes,  there  is  no  baacness  so  low  that  they  will  not 
descend  to  it. 

Two  years  and  a  half  ago,  a  hundred  thousand  people  met 
together  in  this  city  to  resent  the  insult  to  the  Flag  at 
Sumter,  and  to  prepare  for  putting  down  by  force  a  conspir- 
acy against  the  authority  of  the  government  and  the  integrity 
of  the  Union.  The  conspiracy  was  inaugurated  by  the 
treacherous  seizure  of  forts  and  revenue  vessels,  the  plunder 
of  mints  and  arsenals,  and  by  a  course  of  fraud  and  violence 
on  the  part  of  the  leaders  without  a  parallel  in  the  annals  of 
civilization.  The  authority  of  the  government  had  been 
struck  down  in  every  State  south  of  Maryland.  The 
navigation  of  the  Mississippi  had  been  usurped,  and  was 
permitted  to  be  carried  on  only  by  sufferance  of  the  rebel 
authorities  at  New  Orleans.  The  piratical  flag  of  Jefferson 
Davis  and  his  associates  had  been  unfurled  where  the  old 
Flag  of  the  Confederation  and  the  Union,  consecrated  by  a 
thousand  precious  memories,  had  waved  for  more  than 
three-quarters  of  a  century  as  the  emblem  of  order,  enlight- 
ened government,  and  civil  liberty.  [Cheers.]  Thank  God! 
the  old  banner  has  been  restored  in  portions  of  every  State 
of  the  Union.  [Enthusiastic  applause.]  The  waters  of  the 
Mississippi  flow  on  from  their  sources  to  the  sea  without 
obstruction,  bearing  on  their  bosom  no  token  of  the  treason 
which  but  recently  held  dominion  over  them.  [Loud 
cheering.]     The  ancient  geographical  boundaries  are  being 


412  JOHN    ADAMS    DIX 

rapidly  regained.  In  population  the  power  of  the  rebellion 
is  declining  as  signally  as  in  territorial  extent.  The  seceded 
States  began  the  contest  with  about  five  hundred  thousand 
men  capable  of  bearing  arms.  One  half  must  have  perished 
by  the  sword  and  disease,  or  have  become  disqualified  for 
service  in  the  field.  We  began  with  two  millions  of  able- 
bodied  men.  Our  losses  do  not  exceed  theirs  ;  and  equal 
losses,  with  aggregate  numbers  so  unequal,  must  soon 
exhaust  them,  while  our  own  relative  strength  is  every 
moment  increased.      [Applause.] 

The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  the  elements  of  society 
in  the  United  States,  thus  rudely  and  wickedly  disturbed, 
must  be  re-adjusted,  and  the  old  order  of  things  re-estab- 
lished, possibly  with  modifications,  growing  as  necessities 
out  of  the  shock  they  have  sustained.  With  whom  shall  the 
conditions  of  the  re-union  be  negotiated  and  arranged  ?  Cer- 
tainly not  with  the  men  who  caused  the  war["  No,  no  !  "],  and 
with  it  a  sacrifice  of  half  a  million  of  lives.  National  honor, 
retributive  justice,  respect  for  the  principle  of  stability  in 
established  systems,  a  proper  regard  for  the  generations 
which  are  to  come  after  us,  and  whose  political  organiza- 
tions will  derive  strength  or  weakness  from  the  issue  of  the 
mighty  conflict  we  are  engaged  in — all  these  considerations 
demand  that  the  architects  of  disorder  who  have  violated 
the  public  peace,  and  broken  the  social  contract  they  had 
sworn  to  observe,  shall  have  no  part  in  our  future  govern- 
ment. With  them  we  can  never  even  negotiate  for  peace. 
[Great  applause.]  When  they  shall  have  been  expelled 
from  the  country  they  have  devastated  and  dishonored, 
when  their  military  power  shall  have  been  broken,  and  their 
forces  dispersed,  and  the  deluded  masses  of  the  South  shall 
have  been  liberated  from  the  tyranny  under  which  they 
have  been  crushed,  it  will  be  time  to  make  terms — not  with 
the  guilty  leaders,  but  with  those  whom  they  have  defrauded, 
plundered,  and  oppressed.     [Loud  cheering.] 

In  a  contest  reaching  far  beyond  ourselves,  involving  the 
destinies  of  our  children,  and  the  fate  of  the  country  itself 
— a  contest  which  is  to  settle  for  all  future  time  the  momen- 
tous problem  whether  governments  founded  upon  popular 
representation  have  the  strength  necessary  to  sustain 
themselves  again  internal  discord  and  violence — it  is  amaz- 


THE    FLAG-THE    OLD    FLAG  413 

ing  that  there  are  any  amon-  us  who  cannot  rise  above  the 
level  of  their  personal  and  party  interests,  and  act   only  in 

'f 'T' MfV ^''  ^^'"^^  P'^'^  '''^^'  ''^''''^'  '''^  ^'^  grappling,  and 
which  still  threatens  with  destruction  all  that  is  most  sacred 
in  government,  in  society,  and  in  domestic  life.  TEnthu- 
siastic  applause.] 

In  .such  a  contest,  no  man  who  thinks  rightly  can  doubt 
wherein  his  duty  consists.  It  may  be  stated  in  a  sin^r],. 
breath.  Stand  by  the  Union.  Stand  by  the  Government  • 
It  IS  the  representative  of  the  Union.  Stand  by  the  Adl 
ministration  in  its  war  measures  ;  it  is  the  exponent  of  the 
Government  [cheers]  :  nay,  it  is,  for  the  time  being  the 
Government  itself.  ["  That's  it  !  "]  It  may  not  have  suited 
us  all  in  every  respect.  We  may  think  that  in  some  things 
it  has  done  wrong,  in  others  that  it  might  have  done  better 
But  the  destinies  of  the  country  are  in  its  hands  ["  That's 
so"],  and  it  is  not  only  the  duty,  but  the  interest  of  those 
who  desire  a  speedy  and  successful  termination  of  tlie  war, 
to  sustain  it,  strengthen  it,  co-operate  with  it  cordially  and 
thoroughly,  until  its  authority  is  firmly  re-cstabh\shed. 
[Great  applause.] 

Let  us  bear  perpetually  in  mind  that,  in  a  Government 
constituted  like  ours,  with  numerous  parts  aggregated  into 
one  consisent  whole,  disruption  is  death— not  merely  to  one 
or  a  few,  but  death  to  each  and  to  all.  No  sacrifice  of  treas- 
ure or  life  is  too  great  to  avert  such  a  dissolution  of  our 
political  system.  [Louder  cheers.]  Better  that  these  walls 
within  which  we  are  assembled  should  crumble  into  dust ; 
better  that  this  island,  with  all  its  treasures  of  industry  and 
art,  with  its  unexampled  social  and  commercial  activity, 
to  which  a  million  of  voices  everyday  of  its  great  life  bears 
testimony — better,  I  say,  that  it  should  be  given  up,  with 
all  these  trophies  of  civilization,  to  its  primeval  silence  and 
solitude,  than  that  the  institutions  which  have  made  it  wliat 
it  is  should  be  torn  down  by  traitorous  hands.  [Tremen- 
dous cheering.] 

But  I  have  no  such  gloomy  forebodings  of  evil.  If  the 
darkness  is  not  yet  all  gone,  and  the  light  not  fully  come ; 
if  the  period  of  transition  is  not  yet  ended  ;  7(/>i  iiox  abiit, 
nee  tavien  orta  dies.  Yet  every  day  brings  with  it  fresh 
evidence  of  the  hopelessness  of  the  rebel  cause,  and   tlie 


414  JOHN    ADAMS    DIX 

speedy  exhaustion  of  its  strength  in  resources  and  in  men. 
Every  day  furnishes  stronger  assurance  that  the  process  of 
fermentation  through  which  we  are  passing  will  throw  off 
what  is  impiw'e,  and  give  in  the  end  new  strength  to  the 
Union,  new  prosperity,  glory,  and  grandeur  to  the  Republic. 
[Cheers.] 

And  to  return  to  the  topic  with  which  I  began — when  our 
day  of  trial  shall  have  gone  by,  the  old  flag  shall  float  again 
unquestioned  on  the  land  and  on  the  sea,  the  emblem  not 
merely  of  the  past,  but  of  the  latest  and  noblest  of  all  victo- 
ries— the  triumph  of  a  great  nation  over  the  elements  of 
weakness  and  danger  contained  within  itself.  [Enthusiastic 
cheers,  the  whole  company  rising  and  giving  three  cheers 
for  General  Dix.] 


WILLIAM   HENRY   DRAPER 


OUR   MEDICAL    ADVISERS 

[Speech  of  Dr.  William  H.  Draper  at  the  Ii3lh  anniversary  banquet 
of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  State  of  New  York.  The  banquet 
was  given  in  New  York  City,  May  lo,  1881,  and  James  IM.  Brown,  tlie 
Vice-President,  occupied  the  chair.] 

Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  : — The  reverend  gentle- 
man* who  has  recently  spoken  said  that  he  was  a  stranger 
and  you  had  taken  him  in  ;  I  regret  that  I  am  an  old  citizen 
of  New  York,  and  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  has  taken  me 
in.  [Laughter.]  When  I  received  the  cordial  invitation 
from  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  to  attend  this  banquet  I 
was  entirely  at  a  loss  to  know  why  I  had  been  so  honored. 
Two  days  ago  I  received  a  kind  note  from  the  secretary, 
informing  me  that  I  should  be  expected  to  make  a  few  re- 
marks on  any  subject  appropriate  to  the  occasion.  This 
explained  to  me  the  honor,  if  not  the  motive,  of  the  invita- 
tion. I  find  myself  in  the  most  embarrassing  predicament. 
There  is  no  place  in  a  banquet  like  this  for  a  doctor.  The 
duties  of  a  doctor  so  far  as  I  know  in  relation  to  an  occasion 
of  this  kind  are  post-praiidial.  [Laughter.]  Had  you  in- 
vited me  to  arrange  this  banquet  for  you  upon  a  physio- 
logical basis  and  with  a  view  to  your  welfare  I  might  have 
been  of  service  to  you.  But  as  I  said  before,  the  doctor 
will  find  his  true  place  in  relation  to  the  sort  of  banquet  a 
merchant  prince  provides — to-morrow.     [Laughter.] 

When  I  considered  the  subject  on  whick  I  should  address 
a  few  words  to  you  I  must  sa\'  that  I  was  at  a  loss  to  under- 
stand what  relation  commerce  bears  to  the  profession  I  have 
the  honor  to  represent.  I  thought  to  myself  that  commerce 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  drugs,  but  not  much  with  doc- 
tors. We  all  know  the  interest  which  commerce  has  in  the 
*  Rev.  Dr.  Wilbur  V.  Watkiiu. 


4l6  WILLIAM    HENRY    DRAPER 

trade  in  opium  ;  how  the  tax  upon  cinchona  bark  brings  a 
laro-e  revenue  to  the  Government  and  fortunes  to  the  manu- 
facturers of  quinine  and  how  patent  medicines  constitute 
an  ever-increasing  means  of  commercial  intercourse.  But 
this  does  not  seem  to  me  to  have  much  to  do  with  doctors. 
It  then  occurred  to  me  that  perhaps  you  were  not  aware 
that  in  this  City  of  New  York  we  make  every  year  from 
600  to  800  doctors,  and  I  thought  I  would  suggest  to  you 
that  doctors  might,  perhaps,  if  you  were  in  search  of  some 
new  enterprise,  constitute  a  very  excellent  article  of  export. 
[Laughter  and  applause.]  I  thought  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  for  the  country  if  you  were  to  export  doctors,  who 
constitute  one  of  our  surest  and  most  considerable  crops. 
[Laughter.]  You  are  perhaps  not  aware  that  in  periods  of 
great  commercial  depression  the  number  of  young  men  who 
seek  their  fortunes  in  the  medical  profession  always  in- 
creases. This  is  a  fact  which  I  believe  is  confirmed  by 
statistics.  Why  it  should  be  so,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  explain, 
unless  it  be  that  by  this  arrangement  society  is  spared  the 
influx  of  a  large  number  of  very  poor  merchants ;  or  it  is 
possible  that  it  is  a  providential  arrangement  by  which  the 
surplus  population  is  removed,  a  point  of  great  importance 
in  times  of  commercial  distrust.     [Laughter.] 

I  was  asked  only  a  few  moments  ago  to  furnish  the  chair- 
man with  the  theme  of  my  remarks.  Inasmuch  as  I  had 
not  prepared  an  address  I  was  at  a  loss  to  know  what  the 
theme  of  my  discursive  speech  should  be.  I  looked  down 
the  list  of  themes  and  saw  one  which  had  been  given  to  my 
friend,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Taylor,  and  it  suggested  this :  "  Our 
Medical  Advisers ;  they  lead  to  a  brighter  world,  and  show 
the  way."  [Laughter.]  Now  I  hope  my  friend.  Dr. Taylor, 
will  not  regard  this  as  simply  a  travesty  upon  the  theme  to 
which  he  is  to  respond.  I  do  not  intend  it  as  such,  for  I 
am  prepared  to  affirm  that  doctors  do  lead  to  brighter  worlds 
and  show  the  way.  I  do  not  mean  the  world  that  is  to 
come,  I  do  not  believe  there  is  anything  more  dark  and 
dismal  and  narrow  in  the  way  of  a  world  than  the  one  in 
which  the  miserable  dyspeptic  lives.  Now,  when  a  doctor 
leads  one  out  of  that  wretched  world  into  the  bright  and 
hopeful  realm  of  health,  he  carries  him,  it  seems  to  me,  into 
a  sort  of   heaven   on   earth.     [Applause.]     And  it  is  in  this 


OUR    MEDICAL   ADVISERS  417 

sense    I    think  it  may  be   truly  said  that   doctors  lead   to 
brighter  worlds. 

Now,  the  gentleman  who  sits  at  my  left  hand  took  occa- 
sion in  his  speech  to  say  that  if  you  had  any  difficulty  in 
knowing  how  to  spend  the  money  which  has  accumulated 
in  your  coffers  he  could  tell  you  what  to  do  with  it.  The 
gentleman  who  has  just  sat  down  has  also  told  you  how 
you  can  spend  some  of  your  surplus  income  in  educating 
the  negroes.  But  if  I  may  be  allowed,  gentlemen,  modestly 
to  suggest  a  way  in  which  you  would  do  yourselves  great 
honor  and  the  world  great  benefit,  it  would  be  in  doing 
something  to  make  a  better  class  of  doctors  than  are  made 
at  the  present  day.  [Applause.]  I  have  said  that  600  or 
800  doctors  are  made  in  this  city  every  year,  and  this  is  but 
a  fraction  of  those  made  all  over  the  country.  I  have  gone 
so  far  as  to  suggest  that  you  could  make  of  them  an  article 
of  export  ;  but  by  putting  better  means  of  instruction 
within  reach  of  these  young  men,  by  making  them  stronger 
in  knowledge  and  improving  in  every  way  their  means  of 
education,  you  can  keep  them  at  home  and  they  will  con- 
stitute what  they  ought  to  be — one  of  the  most  important 
and  useful  classes  in  society.  [Applause.]  Commerce,  we 
all  know,  is  the  vanguard  of  civilization,  and  wherever  com- 
merce goes,  there  must  go  the  blessings  of  science,  and  of 
the  arts,  and  among  them  I  regard  none  greater  than  the 
blessing  dispensed  by  the  medical  profession.  [Applause.] 
27 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE 


THE  TYPICAL  DUTCHMAN 

[Speech  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke  at  the  fifth  annual  banquet 
of  the  Holland  Society  of  New  York,  January  lo,  1890.  Robert  B.  Roose- 
velt, Vice-President  of  the  Society,  presided.  Dr.  van  Dyke  responded 
to  the  toast,  "  The  Typical  Dutchman."] 

Mr.  President  and  Members  of  the  Holland  So- 
ciety:— Who  is  the  typical  Dutchman?  Rembrandt,  the 
splendid  artist ;  Erasmus,  the  brilliant  scholar  ;  Coster,  the 
inventor  of  printing;  Leuwenhoek,  the  profound  scientist; 
Grotius,  the  great  lawyer;  Barendz,  the  daring  explorer; 
De  Witt,  the  skilful  statesman  ;  Van  Tromp,  the  trump  of 
admirals ;  William  the  Silent,  heroic  defender  of  liberty 
against  a  world  of  tyranny  ;  William  HI,  the  emancipator 
of  England,  whose  firm,  peaceful  hand,  just  two  centuries 
ago,  set  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  free  to  fulfil  its  mighty  des- 
tiny— what  hero,  artist,  philosopher,  discoverer,  lawgiver, 
admiral,  general  or  monarch  shall  we  choose  from  the  long 
list  of  Holland's  illustWous  dead  to  stand  as  the  typical 
Dutchman? 

Nay,  not  one  of  these  men,  famous  as  they  were,  can  fill 
the  pedestal  of  honor  to-night.  For  though  their  glorious 
achievements  have  lent  an  undying  lustre  to  the  name  of 
Holland,  the  qualities  that  really  created  her  and  made  her 
great,  lifted  her  in  triumph  from  the  sullen  sea,  massed  her 
inhabitants  like  a  living  bulwark  against  oppression,  filled 
her  cities  with  the  light  of  learning  and  her  homes  with  the 
arts  of  peace,  covered  the  ocean  with  her  ships  and  the 
islands  with  her  colonies — the  qualities  that  made  Holland 
great  were  the  qualities  of  the  common  people.  The  ideal 
character  of  the  Dutch  race  is  not  an  exceptional  genius, 

418 


THE    TYPICAL    UUIXUMAN  4If) 

but  a  plain,  brave,  straightforw;ird,  kiiul-licarted,  liberty- 
loving,  law-abiding  citizen — a  man  with  a  healtliy  conscience, 
a  good  digestion,  and  a  cheerful  determination  to  do  his 
duty  in  the  sphere  of  life  to  which  God  has  called  him. 
[Applause.]  Let  me  try  to  etch  the  portrait  of  such  a  man 
in  few  and  simple  lines.  Grant  me  but  six  strokes  for  the 
picture. 

The  typical  Dutchman  is  an  honest  man,  and  tiiat's  tlic 
noblest  work  of  God.  Physically  he  may  be — and  if  he 
attends  these  dinners  he  probably  will  be — more  or  less 
round.  But  morally  he  must  be  square.  And  surely  in 
this  age  of  sham,  when  there  is  so  much  plated  ware  that 
passes  itself  off  for  solid  silver,  and  so  much  work  done  at 
half  measure  and  charged  at  full  price — so  many  doctors 
who  buy  diplomas,  and  lawyers  whose  names  should  be 
"  Necessity,"  because  they  know  no  law  [laughter  and 
applause],  and  preachers  who  insist  on  keeping  in  their 
creeds  doctrines  which  they  do  not  profess  to  believe — surely 
in  this  age,  in  which  sky-rockets  are  so  plentiful  and  well- 
seasoned  firewood  is  so  scarce,  the  man  who  is  most 
needed  is  not  the  genius,  the  discoverer,  the  brilliant  sayer 
of  new  things,  but  simply  the  honest  man,  who  speaks  the 
truth,  pays  his  debts,  does  his  work  thoroughly,  and  is 
satisfied  with  what  he  has  earned.     [Applause.] 

The  typical  Dutchman  is  a  free  man.  Liberty  is  his  pas- 
sion ;  and  has  been  since  the  days  of  Leyden  and  Alkmaar. 
It  runs  in  the  blood.  A  descendant  of  the  old  Batavian 
who  fought  against  Rome  is  bound  to  be  free  at  any  cost  : 
he  hates  tyranny  in  every  form.     [Applause.] 

"  I  honor  the  man  who  is  ready  to  sink 
Half  his  present  repute  for  the  freedom  to  think  ; 
And  when  he  has  thought,  be  his  cause  strong  or  weak, 
Will  sink  t'other  half  for  the  freedom  to  speak, 
Caring  naught  for  what  vengeance  the  mob  has  in  store, 
L,et  that  mob  be  the  upper  ten  thousand,  or  lower."* 

That  is  the  spirit  of  the  typical  Dutchman.  Never  has  it 
been  more  needed  than  it  is  to-day;  to  guard  our  land 
against  the  oppression  of  the  plutocrat  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  demagogue  on  the  other  hand  ;  to  prevent  a  government 
of  the  parties  by  the  bosses  for  the  spoils,  and  to  preserve  a 
*  James  Russell  Lowell. 


420  HENRY    VAN    DYKE 

government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people. 
[Renewed  applause.] 

The  typical  Dutchman  is  a  prudent  man.  He  will  be  free 
to  choose  for  himself;  but  he  generally  chooses  to  do 
nothing  rash.  He  does  not  admire  those  movements  which 
are  like  the  Chinaman's  description  of  the  toboggan-slide, 
"Whiz!  Walk  a  mile!"  He  prefers  a  one-story  ground- 
rent  to  a  twelve-story  mortgage  with  an  elevator.  [Laugh- 
ter.] He  has  a  constitutional  aversion  to  unnecessary  risks. 
In  society,  in  philosophy,  in  commerce,  he  sticks  to  the  old 
way  until  he  knows  that  the  new  one  is  better.  On  the 
train  of  progress  he  usually  sits  in  the  middle  car,  sometimes 
in  the  smoker,  but  never  on  the  cow-catcher.  [Laughter.] 
And  yet  he  arrives  at  his  destination  all  the  same.  [Re- 
newed laughter.] 

The  typical  Dutchman  is  a  devout  man.  He  could  not 
respect  himself  if  he  did  not  reverence  God.  [Applause.] 
Religion  was  at  the  centre  of  Holland's  most  glorious  life, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  sturdy  heroism  and 
cheerful  industry  of  our  Dutch  forefathers  without  remem- 
bering that  whether  they  ate  or  drank  or  labored  or  prayed 
or  fought  or  sailed  or  farmed,  they  did  all  to  the  glory  of 
God.  [Applause.]  The  only  difference  between  New  Am- 
sterdam and  New  England  was  this  :  The  Puritans  founded 
a  religious  community  with  commercial  principles ;  the 
Dutchman  founded  a  commercial  community  with  relig- 
ious principles.  [Laughter.]  Which  was  the  better  I  do 
not  say  ;  but  every  one  knows  which  was  the  happier  to  live 
in. 

The  typical  Dutchman  is  a  liberal  man.  He  believes,  but 
he  does  not  persecute.  He  says,  in  the  immortal  words  of 
William  HI,  "Conscience  is  God's  province."  So  it  came 
to  pass  that  New  Amsterdam  became  an  asylum  for  the  op- 
pressed in  the  New  World,  as  Old  Amsterdam  had  been  in 
the  Old  World.  No  witches  burned  ;  no  Quakers  flogged  ; 
peace  and  fair  chances  for  everybody ;  love  God  as  much  as 
you  can,  and  don't  forget  to  love  your  neighbor  as  yourself. 
How  excellent  the  character  in  which. piety  and  charity  are 
joined  !  While  I  have  been  speaking  you  have  been  thinking 
of  one  who  showed  us  the  harmony  of  such  a  character  in 
his  living  presence — Judge   Hooper  C.  Van  Vorst,  the  first 


THE    TYPICAL    DUTCHMAN'  42 1 

President  of  the  Ilollaiul  Society — an  honest  lawyer,  an 
upright  judge,  a  prudent  counsellor,  a  sincere  Christian,  a 
genial  connpanion.  While  such  a  man  lives  his  fellowship  is 
a  blessing,  and  when  he  dies  his  memory  is  sacred.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

But  one  more  stroke  remains  to  be  added  to  the  picture. 
The  typical  Dutchman  is  a  man  of  few  words.  Perhaps  I 
ought  to  say  he  zvas  :  for  in  this  talkative  age,  even  in  The 
Holland  Society,  a  degenerate  speaker  will  forget  himself 
so  far  as  not  to  keep  silence  when  he  talks  about  the  typical 
Dutchman.  [Laughter.]  But  those  old  companions  v.  ho 
came  to  this  country  previous  to  the  year  1675,  as  Dutch 
citizens,  under  the  Dutch  flag,  and  holding  their  tongues  in 
the  Dutch  language, — ah,  they  understood  their  business. 
Their  motto  was  facta  non  verba.  They  are  the  men  we 
praise  to-night  in  our  : — 

SONG  OF  THE  TYPICAL  DUTCHMAN. 

They  sailed  from  the  shores  of  the  Zuidir  Zee 

Across  the  stormy  ocean, 
To  build  for  the  world  a  new  country 

According  to  their  notion  ; 
A  land  where  thought  should  be  free  as  air, 

And  speech  be  free  as  water  ; 
Where  man  to  man  should  be  just  and  fair, 
And  Law  be  Liberty's  daughter. 
They  were  brave  and  kind. 
And  of  simple  mind, 
And  the  world  has  need  of  such  men  ; 
So  we  say  with  pride, 
(On  the  father's  side). 
That  they  were  typical  Dutchmen. 

They  bought  their  land  in  an  honest  way, 

For  the  red  man  was  their  neighbor  ; 
They  farmed  it  well,  and  made  it  pay 

By  the  increment  of  labor. 
They  ate  their  bread  in  the  sweat  o'  their  brow. 

And  smoked  their  pipes  at  leisure  ; 
For  they  said  tlien,  as  we  say  now. 
That  the  fruit  of  toil  is  pleasure. 

When  their  work  was  done, 
They  had  their  fun, 
And  the  world  has  need  of  such  men  ; 
So  we  say  with  pride, 
(On  the  father's  side), 
That  they  were  typical  Dutchmen. 


422  HENRY   VAN    DYKE 

They  held  their  faith  without  offence, 

And  said  their  pra3'ers  on  Sunday  ; 
But  they  never  could  see  a  bit  of  sense 

In  burning  a  witch  on  Monday. 
They  loved  their  God  with  a  love  so  true, 

And  with  a  head  so  level, 
That  they  could  afford  to  love  men  too, 
And  not  be  afraid  of  the  devil. 
They  kept  their  creed 
In  word  and  deed, 
And  the  world  has  need  of  such  men  ; 
So  we  say  with  pride, 
(On  the  father's  side). 
That  they  were  typical  Dutchmen. 

When  the  English  fleet  sailed  up  the  bay, 

The  small  Dutch  town  was  taken  ; 
But  the  Dutchmen  there  had  come  to  stay. 

Their  hold  was  never  shaken. 
They  could  keep  right  on,  and  work  and  waii 

For  the  freedom  of  the  nation  ; 
And  we  claim  to-day  that  New  York  State 
Is  built  on  a  Dutch  foundation. 

They  were  solid  and  strong. 
They  have  lasted  long, 
And  the  world  has  need  of  such  men  • 
So  we  say  with  pride, 
(On  the  father's  side), 
That  they  were  typical  Dutchmen. 

[Great  applause.] 


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